AND 
$TRI PES 

^PORTER 
EMERSON 
BROWNE 




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Book 5:44^ S^f 

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COPYRIGHT DEPOSKR 



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SCARS AND STRIPES 

PORTER EMERSON BROWNE 



i 




AND THERE YOU HAVE THE POOR OLD MAN SHAKING 
HIS FIST ONE MINUTE AND HIS FINGER THE NEXT ! 



SCARS AND 
STRIPES 



BY 

PORTER EMERSON BROWNE 



FRONTISPIECE BY 

PETER NEWELL 




NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



r ~ C 6^ 



COPYRIGHT, igi 7, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



4i 



*° 



3 !S ! 7 



COPYRIGHT, IQl6, BY THE MCCLURE PUBLICATIONS, INCORPORATED 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



©C 133 



TO 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

One Scars and Stripes ..."••. 13 

Two The Neutral 57 

Three "For God and King!" 85 

Four "Somewhere in " 99 

Five Mary and Marie 123 

Six "Uncle Sham" 145 

Seven "We'll Dally 'Round the Flag, Boys !" 171 



CHAPTER ONE 



SCARS AND STRIPES 



SCARS AND STRIPES 

CHAPTER ONE 

SCARS AND STRIPES 

WELL," I said, "it looks as though the old man 
is beginning to wake up at last." 

"Uncle Sam?" queried my friend. 

I nodded. "Don't you think so?" I asked. 

He considered, thoughtfully. 

"Perhaps," he answered. "If he isn't, at least 
he's beginning to toss in his sleep and pick at the 
covers." 

He paused. 

"But what I'm waiting 1 for," he went on, "is to 

get a peep at his face when finally he sits up in bed 

and props his eyes open and gets a good look at 

things. He'll certainly wish that he hadn't waked 

up — or that he'd never gone to sleep in the first 

place. The trusted employes that he left in charge 

of things when he undertook his present Rip Van 

Winkle have certainly messed things up about as 

perfectly as they could have done had they had 

13 



14 SCARS AND STRIPES 

their hearts and souls, instead of their hands and 
feet, in the work." 

My friend shook his head. 

"I've sat for hours," he observed, "trying to think 
of something they could have done worse. But so 
far, I've got to compliment them at least upon the 
multiplicity of their mistakes ; for, while I can find 
scores of errors that they needn't have made, I can't 
find a single one that they've overlooked. When it 
comes to doing the wrong thing at the right time, 
their batting average is a thousand. And the par- 
ticularly beautiful and naive part of it is the way 
they stand around and pat themselves on the back 
about it! 

" 'America's spirit is reawakened,' they say. 'Our 
honour and integrity cannot be tampered with.' And 
this when for two hell-born, bleeding years our 
honour and integrity have been at will burned and 
bombed and blown up, torn and trampled and tor- 
tured ! . . . But at that you must admit that a na- 
tional honour that can stand such treatment as ours 
has borne and still be on its feet, is, in the crude 
vernacular of the proletariat, some honour. So we 
can console ourselves with the thought that, if noth- 
ing else, our national honour at least holds all record 
for endurance. It's bullet-proof, and blood-proof, 
and insult-proof. It recks but little of women and 



SCARS AND STRIPES 15 

babies ruthlessly slain. Its flag dishonoured, its 
rights relinquished, its citizens crying with dying 
lips for succour that does not come, our national 
honour still goes teetering along, as supinely helpless 
as a baby hippopotamus, the while trying to conceal 
its dead and dying by belching forth oratorical gas- 
clouds anent the 'higher rights of humanity' and 'the 
world once more thrilled to hear the new world 
asserting the standards of justice and liberty/ 

"Germany must be worried sick — to say nothing 
of Mexico. The first thing they know, the New 
World will slam a dictionary at 'em, or something. 

"For heaven's sake, isn't it ever going to pene- 
trate into the dank and w r ord-tangled jungles of 
phraseology in which these men think they do their 
thinking that it is one thing to assert and another to 
act? You can assert until you're black in the face 
and all covered with lather; but that doesn't affect 
the assertee except to excite his wonder, amusement 
and pity. 

"'What's the matter with the old lad now?' 
queries Germany, watching Uncle Sam all worked 
up and breaking out into an oratorical rash. 

" 'Oh,' says Austria, 'he's only . asserting his 
rights again.' 

" 'He'll bust a blood-vessel, the first thing he 
knows,' says Germany, 'getting all het up like that.' 



16 SCARS AND STRIPES 

" 'We should worry/ says Austria. 'It's his 
blood-vessel, ain't it? Come on. Let's go down 
to the bulletin-board and see what the score at Ver- 
dun is/ 

"And off they go, leaving Uncle Sam asserting 
his rights to the circumambient ether, while Mexico, 
hiding behind a cactus, stimulates him to further 
assertion by occasionally chunking him with a rock. 

"Elihu Root said it. You can't shake your fist 
at a man and then shake your finger. You can 
shake your finger, if you want to; but before you 
start in shaking your fist, you'd better be sure there's 
a brick in it. Also you'd better be ready morally, 
physically, and financially to fight, and fight to the 
limit. The man who shakes his fist and isn't pre- 
pared to back it up with a fight, is a fool. He gains 
nothing; and he loses everything. For the minute 
he doesn't back it up, his adversary knows right off 
that he's only a bluff; and then is gone even the 
respect that his adversary thought was due him. 

"If you want proof of this, you needn't go any 
further than Mexico. Why are we in all that mess 
down there? — a mess that it will take at least ten, 
and maybe even twenty or thirty, years ; and a hun- 
dred thousand, or even more, men to clean up. Why 
has all that come to plague us now? Because we 
tried to put over a cheap bluff. Because we shook 



SCARS AND STRIPES 17 

our fist when we weren't ready, and didn't intend 
to fight. That's why. 

"And because we've been caught, because our 
bluff has been called, because the Mexicans found 
out that we didn't mean what we said, and that back 
of all our resounding phrases lay nothing but wind; 
because experience had taught them that, once con- 
fronted, we would stop shaking our fist and start in 
shaking our finger again, the Mexicans have lost 
all respect for us — yes, even all fear of us — and 
we've got to start in with them all over from the 
beginning. 

"To-day, in Mexico, the words gringo (meaning 
American) and coward are synonymous. Go to 
Mexico to-day, if you will. But don't admit that 
you are an American. Say that you are English, 
German, French, Italian, even a Chinaman or a Mor- 
mon. But don't admit that you are an American. 
If you do, in all sections will you be insulted; in 
some will you be killed. And why not? Haven't 
Americans time and again been murdered without 
reprisal ? Haven't American soldiers been sent into 
Mexico only to be driven out again? Hasn't the 
American government repeatedly shaken its fist at 
them only, on the first show of resistance, to shake 
its finger? Hasn't the American government re- 
peatedly answered the cries for help of its dying citi- 



18 SCARS AND STRIPES 

zens by advising them to get out of the country 
if they could, and if not, to do the next best thing? 
What wonder, then, that American men and women 
are not safe in Mexico ? What wonder that Mexico 
neither fears nor respects us, but only despises and 
mocks us ? 

"And it is a fact, impossible, incomprehensible 
even as it may seem, that the Mexicans think the 
United States is afraid of them! Yet, when you 
come to analyse, it is neither impossible nor incom- 
prehensible. Virtually all the population of Mexico 
is illiterate, vastly ignorant and very vain. The 
belief of the Mexicans in their own prowess, and in 
the cowardice of Americans, has been carefully fos- 
tered by their own leaders, and even more sedulously 
cultivated by the government of the United States. 
It is an opinion founded upon fact, and supported by 
a proof but too ample. Hence why should they not 
believe it ? 

"It all comes within the policy of our government 
of borrowing big troubles to pay off little ones. 

"During all the chaos in Mexico that followed the 
withdrawal of Diaz, and the succession of Madero, 
we kept out ; that is, officially we did. Unofficially 
— but that's too long a story to tell here. 

"Then came Huerta, personally and politically 
unappealing perhaps, to our government, but at the 



SCARS AND STRIPES 19 

same time the one man who had it in his power to 
rule Mexico as Mexico must be ruled if ruled she 
must be by Mexicans. For, be it known, the Mex- 
icans are not too proud to fight. They are a hardy 
lot and, when it comes to pacificism, they are sadly 
practical. They believe in Peace at Any Price, and 
stand always ready to pay the price. The only 
thing they insist on is that the other lad shall furnish 
the peace ; and to see that he be not derelict therein, 
they are perfectly willing, and even a bit pleased, to 
convert him into a facsimile of a colander, or a pin- 
cushion, or similar article of household use. Which 
accounts for the vividness and uncertainty of life 
in that country. 

"However, as I say, Huerta, not coming up to our 
more cultivated northern standards, him we refused 
to recognise. The further fact that, when it came 
to diplomacy, he made our most cultivated lights 
look like a lot of children playing T Spy!' around a 
flat rock, did not increase our cordiality. Hence we 
used our moral influence, the hollowness of which 
had not then been exposed, to have him bounced. 

"Once we had him and his family rounded up 
and corral counted on Long Island, with the over- 
flow picketed in New York, we looked around to see 
whom we could recognise the easiest. It seemed to 
be Villa. So we gave him a lot of guns and cart- 



20 SCARS AND STRIPES 

ridges and boosts in the newspapers, and support, 
both moral and immoral, and turned him loose. 

"Villa starts forth, full of optimism and marital 
happiness. But he doesn't get far when, to our 
pained amazement, an old party wearing spectacles 
comes out from where he's been hiding behind his 
whiskers and bushwhacks our more or less White 
Hope and, as they say, bushwhacks him good. 

"As Villa lies there, feeling of his bumps, while 
his devoted wives administer First Aid to the All 
Bunged Up, we turn to the old party in surprise. 

" 'Hello V we say. ' Where'd you come from ?' 

"'Me?' says the old party. 'Why, I be'n here 
right along/ 

" 'But who are you, anyhow ?' we inquire. 

" 'Carranza's my name,' says the old party. 
'Though mother always calls me Venustiano for 
short.' 

" Oh/ we say. 'But what are you doing around 
here anyway?' 

I'm president,' he says. 
'You are !' we cry, in amazement. 
I sure are,' he says. 'Didn't you see me just 
elect myself?' 

But Villa is our recognised candidate,' we in- 
sist. 'What qualifications have you got for so great 
and august a job?' 



it r 

a r 

it f 



SCARS AND STRIPES 21 

" 'Well/ says Carranza, complacently removing a 
Gila monster and a couple of stinging lizards from 
his facial sage brush, 'I just licked Villa. What 
more do you want?' 

''It seems sufficient. Also again it seems the 
easiest way out of it. Accordingly we recognise 
Carranza; and, with a sigh of relief at having so 
thoroughly and so conscientiously performed our 
duties to mankind and the higher laws of humanity, 
we go back home to look over the political situation 
in Pennsylvania, leaving our erstwhile presidential 
choice, Villa, hiding in a prairie dog hole, as full of 
venom as a rattlesnake. He isn't used to being recog- 
nised and then unrecognised in such a hurry, and it 
leaves him as peevish as a badger. And so he scut- 
tles off into the scenery, taking for his motto, 'Shoot 
Americans First.' 

"And he does. The very first crack out of the box, 
he stops a train. Allowing all the other passengers 
to go free, he takes therefrom seventeen American 
mining men that were going back to their work un- 
der the protection of the Carranza government (and, 
remember, that is the government we had then rec- 
ognised, and behind which we then stood) and, giv- 
ing them a running start, he shoots them in the back. 

"Unarmed they were. They offered no resist- 
ance. Deliberately, cold-bloodedly, they were mur- 



22 SCARS AND STRIPES 

dered. And then, their blood-hunger but half glut- 
ted, did Villa and his men shoot bullet after bullet 
into their dead bodies; and even then still insatiate, 
did they jab the mangled corpses with bayonet and 
with knife! . . . Truly, the government of the 
United States did well when it gave its recognition 
to so noble a humanitarian as Francisco Villa! 
Huerta, whom on moral grounds we could not rec- 
ognise, may have been, and probably was, all that 
has been said. But at that he makes some of the 
Mexican presidents we have recognised look like 
new-hatched angels with two harps and four sets 
of pinions. 

"And then what happens.' Do we take imme- 
diate and drastic action to punish the murderers? 
to gain atonement for past crimes and protection 
against future? You bet we do! 

"Glancing up from the presidential situation in 
the Middle West, we ask Carranza what he means 
by it. 

" 'How dare you permit Villa to murder Ameri- 
can citizens?' we demand. 'Don't you know that 
the nobler duties of mankind and the higher laws of 
humanity, and that American lives shall be held 
inviolable and inviolate wherever the hand of men 
has ever trod?' we demand. 

"'Sure, / know it/ says Carranza. 'I know it; 



SCARS AND STRIPES 23 

and you know it; but I'm afraid it's a fact that 
Villa's overlooked. He's an ignorant cuss that 
don't scarcely know nothing. Why, would you 
believe it, that feller can hardly write his own 
name. He never even went to night school !' 

" 'Never mind about that,' we say. 'We demand 
the punishment of the offenders.' 

" 'Don't you worry,' says Carranza. 'I'll appre- 
hend them malefactors or know the reason why. 
You just give me a week, or a couple of years, or 
something, and I'll catch every last son-of-a-gun 
of 'em — if they don't die of old age. And when 
I do catch 'em, I'll fill 'em so full of holes they 
won't be worth skinning. You just leave it to me. 
And pray God no harm comes to 'em in the mean- 
time.' 

"At which, again being thoroughly satisfied that 
we have done our duty to humanity and the higher 
laws of mankind, we go back to the political situa- 
tion in Michigan. And there's a state for you! 
Though since they've put up Henry Ford for pres- 
ident, it could scarcely be called a state. It's more 
like a condition. 

"Carranza, meanwhile, realising that he's got to 
throw a bluff at making good, calls in his military 
leaders. He knows, and they know, that they've 
got about as much chance of catching Villa as you 



24 SCARS AND STRIPES 

have of taking dinner with Christopher Columbus. 

"However, they rustle out into the hinterland ; and 
in a few days they come back with a couple of 
fresh-laid corpses. 

"These they tie on stretchers and prop up against 
the place where the curb-stone ought to be in the 
heart of the city of Juarez. 

"Inasmuch as they are two of the most complete 
and thorough corpses that have been seen in some 
time, they at once become the cynosure of all eyes. 
Women stop to gaze upon them happily on their 
way home from market. Men with whom corpses 
are a hobby stop to accord them a dignified and 
envious glance. Corpse parties of children fore- 
gather there of sunny afternoons, little Pancho and 
Panchita calling shrilly to less fortunate adolescents 
whose irksome tasks of grinding flour and keeping 
the flies off father while he takes his daily siesta 
have combined to constrain them to the less allur- 
ing atmosphere of their homes; the while the au- 
thorities, trying not to show the glow of gratifica- 
tion that subtly fills their inner beings, stroll non- 
chalantly about pretending a modesty that they 
cannot really feel. For as an exhibition, it's quite 
the most successful affair that's been pulled off in 
Juarez since the Occupation. 

"In the meanwhile, Carranza sends us a letter. 



SCARS AND STRIPES 25 

M 'Department of the Exterior, 
'Washington, D. C, 
'U. S. A. 
"'Gents: 

" 'In re your recent request to capture and exe- 
cute and otherwise punish the recent perpetrators of 
the murder of American citizens, taken from train 
number 36 and killed by the bandit, Francisco Villa, 
who I don't like any better than you do, will say 
that I have captured two of his generals which I 
have had entirely shot. If you don't believe it, you 
can find their bodies lying in the plaza at Juarez. 
You can find 'em any time. The weather is good, 
so we don't bother to take 'em inside. And besides, 
corpses lasts better outdoors anyway. One is Pablo 
Gomez. That's the skinny one. The other is some- 
body else. 

'Hoping that you are the same, I remain, 

Y'rs truly, 

f V. Carranza, 
Primo Jefe. 
P. S. — 'If this ain't satisfactory, let me know 
and I'll shoot a few more. What's a few corpses 
more or less between friends?' 

"And is it satisfactory? Why not? We got 
what we asked for, didn't we? We demanded the 
punishment and execution of the offenders. Well, 
there they are. Two dead bodies, lying in the pub- 
lic square; lying there while the populace stands 
around admiring them; while photographers take 



'nopmg mat yuu arc 

a t" 



26 SCARS AND STRIPES 

pictures, full face, profile, what not; while little 
children play around. . . . 

"And this within a mile of American soil! This 
in the name of humanity and the higher laws of 
mankind ! 

"And does it end there? Hardly. Again we are 
but borrowing big troubles to pay little ones. Villa 
is still free. Villa is still sore. Villa still has men, 
and guns, and munitions; munitions that we gave 
him! 

"And with these men, and guns, and the muni- 
tions that we gave him, he crosses the border one 
night and slaughters the men and women of Colum- 
bus, New Mexico; American men, American 
women, and on American soil! Yes, he kills on 
American soil American men and American wom- 
en; and he kills them with American guns and 
American powder and American bullets given him 
by the American government! If you can find a 
cuter little idea than this anywhere in history, I'd 
like to hear it. 

"And what do we do then? Again do we take 
immediate and drastic action? Of a surety. Don't 
you know us by this time? 

"We write Carranza a nice chatty note. We tell 
him that we are afraid he isn't able to cope with the 



SCARS AND STRIPES 27 

situation and ask his consent to send troops into 
Mexico. 

"It takes him a week or so to find out, or not find 
out, that he will, or won't, or something. Mean- 
while, of course, we wait. You see, far be it from 
us to offend anybody! 

"But coincidentally popular anger is rising. 
Hence, with a fine show of indignation, we an- 
nounce to the waiting newspaper correspondents 
that we have decided to follow our usual firm and 
drastic course in upholding the nobler laws of man- 
kind and the higher duties of humanity and demand 
Villa's body, dead or alive; or, if they can't find 
the body, the head will do. 

"Which, when it comes to humanity, is also 
rather a unique idea, don't you think? Although 
at that, it's by way of being what is technically 
known as old stuff. Old man Herodius's daughter, 
What's-Her-Name, pulled it with a lad named John 
the Baptist. 

"Then, still in a fine frenzy of righteous indigna- 
tion, we call in the Secretary of War and ask him 
where the army is. He says he doesn't know ex- 
actly; but the last time he saw it, it was sitting 
in the parade ground at Fort Ethan Allen smoking 
a pipe. But he says he'll write it a letter, and if 



28 SCARS AND STRIPES 

it gets it all right, it will probably show up in a 
week or ten days. 

"Thanking the efficient secretary, we leave orders 
to have the field wireless dusted off, and to see 
that the eight flyless aeroplanes are in their accus- 
tomed state of creeping paralysis. Then we look 
up in the geography and find out where Mexico is. 
Then we get out a time-table and find that the 7 :20 
train leaves at 7 :2c Then we buy some automobile 
trucks from Detroit, and take the hospital mules 
from a fort in California, and tell Carranza that we 
are going into Mexico anyway. Just like that! 

"Carranza says is that so? 

" That is, if you don't mind/ we say, smiling 
engagingly. For, it occurs to us that Carranza, 
being a rude soul, may not appreciate a fine frenzy, 
being more accustomed himself to the rough, com- 
mon-or-garden frenzy, such as is commonly found 
in, and indigenous to, his native habitat. 'You 
don't mind, do you?' we ask. 

" 'No,' he says. T mean yes/ 
Then you don't!' we cry, hopefully. 
Yes,' he says. T mean no.' 
c Quite so, quite so,' we return, gently, remem- 
bering that a soft answer turneth away wrath, and 
at the same time wishing that Carranza didn't look 






SCARS AND STRIPES 29 

quite so much like a Rocky Mountain goat hiding in 
a cosy corner. We think a minute. 

" 'But, you see, old man/ we say (thus diplo- 
matically spreading on the apple butter), 'we've got 
to go. The people are demanding the punishment 
of Villa; and if we don't at least show a little 
speed, they're going to snow us under so deep in 
November that compared to us a submarine will 
look like an aeroplane; I don't mean one of ours,' 
you hasten to correct; 'I mean a regular one that 
will fly. 

u 'It's going to be terrible,' you insist. 'We'll 
be buried so far down they'll have to deliver our 
mail with an oyster rake. We won't be able to 
write notes or anything. You've simply got to let 
us go in. That's all.' 

" 'Well/ says Carranza, while we listen with 
eager hands clasped as the syllables sift through his 
whiskers, 'you can go into Mexico on four condi- 
tions/ 

" 'Yes ?' we cry, breathlessly. 

" 'The first,' says Carranza, 'is that you don't ride 
on any of my railroads.' 

" 'Oh, we'll walk,' we assure him. 'We just love 
to walk! We've got new shoes, and everything!' 

" 'The second,' says Carranza, 'is that you don't 
go anywhere where anything is liable to happen/ 



30 SCARS AND STRIPES 

" 'Certainly not !' we expostulate. 

" 'The third/ says Carranza, 'is that you behave 
yourself nice and don't act rough. My countrymen 
don't like you in the first place. They think you're 
a poor piece of cheese; and I've got trouble enough 
fooling 'em about myself without having to. bunco 
'em about you, as well. . . . Well?' he says. 

" 'We agree to that, of course,' we assure him. 

" ' You don't mean you accept those conditions ?' 
says Carranza. 

" 'Why, of course we do,' we answer, gratefully. 
'Thank you. Thank you so much.' 

"Carranza looks at us, helplessly. 

"'And the fourth condition?' we ask. 

"Carranza shakes his head. 

" Tf you accept the other three,' he says, 'the 
fourth don't matter. I've forgot it. And anyway, 
them three's the worst I could think of all by 
myself/ 

"He looks at us and waggles his whiskers, weakly. 

" 'One thing,' he says, eyeing us, thoughtfully, 
Til bet eleven million pesos, which is seven dollars 
in regular money, that his nurse sure dropped him 
on his head when he was a baby.' And, still wag- 
gling his whiskers, he goes off to his presidential 
bomb-proof to offer up his usual evening prayer 



SCARS AND STRIPES 31 

that the next time Obregon crosses a river on horse- 
back, there'll be a quicksand in the bottom. 

"And thus we send our troops into Mexico; 
send them on foot, on horseback, transporting their 
supplies by wagon and automobile; send them into 
a waste of barren, blazing sand, hot during the 
day as a furnace bed, cold at night as a murderer's 
heart; send them in, as fine a body of men as ever 
put shoe on foot, or threw saddle on horse, to 
suffer of thirst and hunger, and the blindness of 
the desert glare; send them in with aeroplanes that 
will not fly, and wireless that will not work, with 
lines of communication that are a farce, and against 
conditions that are a tragedy ; send them in, twelve 
thousand men, to catch one! And that one in a 
friendly country, a country that he knows as well 
as the palms of his hands, a country where horse 
and man and food are found ever at his will. . . . 

"It would be tragic if it weren't so funny. As 
well send a steam roller into the Dismal Swamp 
to catch a typhoid-fever microbe! 

"These men at Washington ! What can they say 
in their own defence, these men at Washington that 
sent our troops into Mexico to a foredoomed fiasco ? 
What excuse have they to offer, these men who 
planned and forced to execution probably the most 
asinine and inept military movement ever conceived 



32 SCARS AND STRIPES 

outside of a nursery jingle? Condemned, and abso- 
lutely, they stand between two alternatives. For 
either they did not know the kind of country and 
conditions with which the troops would be forced 
to contend; in which case are they condemned of 
their ignorance; or they sent them in for the purely 
political purpose of satisfying public sentiment; 
in which case are they condemned of their ambition. 
Could either be more ineluctably damning? For 
men of so vast an ignorance are unfit for high posi- 
tion. Even as men of an ambition so overweening 
as to sacrifice for its political gratification the lives 
of their fellows, are unfit to be known as men. . . . 
"And then what? Doomed to certain failure, as 
of course was the expedition from the first, our 
troops, inadequate in number, helpless in communi- 
cation, could but penetrate so far into a country 
that we ourselves have taught to hate, and despise 
and belittle us. And so, failing ignominiously in 
our avowed purpose, to the accompaniment of a 
lot of windy explanations that mean nothing, do 
we start taking our troops out again! Talk about 
military strategy! Compared to us, that well- 
known king of France who marched his twenty 
thousand men up a hill and then marched them 
down again was a nascent Napoleon. 



SCARS AND STRIPES 33 

"And why do we start taking our troops out 
again ? 

"Because Carranza says that we must! 

"And who is Carranza? 

"A vain and purblind old gentleman that we our- 
selves helped put in power and to whom we have 
furnished arms and ammunition that again have 
been used to kill us with! A pompous and bom- 
bastic old party with whom we fuss and fiddle and 
write letters and make protocols even while the 
sand foundations of his political fortunes slip and 
slide beneath his feet ; just as we fussed and fiddled 
and wrote letters with Villa; just as we fussed and 
fiddled and wrote letters with Huerta; just as, ap- 
parently, it is our intention to fuss and fiddle and 
write letters with Obregon when Carranza is gone, 
and with Cabrera when Obregon is gone, and with 
Somebody Else when Cabrera is gone, and with 
Some One Else when Somebody Else is gone, and 
so on, ad infinitum and ad nauseam. 

"For Mexico is but a bleeding and prostrate 
wreck of a nation, around and over which ride 
murderer and marauder and bandit. She cannot 
help herself; too near to death she is. Ravished 
and ravaged she lies, at the absolute mercy of her 
matricides, the matricides that we have stood aloof 
to watch pursue their bloody work unchecked. 



34 SCARS AND STRIPES 

"To recognise one of her sons against the other 
is but to court that one's downfall; for the rest 
will fall upon him and trample him beneath their 
feet. The might of blood in Mexico carries its 
own punishment. 

"So it is that to write letters to a president of 
Mexico is like writing letters on the water with a 
rod of glass. 

"But letter-writing, while sufficiently absurd, yet 
in a way is harmless. What hurts is the sending in 
of a handful of our soldiers to face the thousands 
of blood-hungry, life-despising descendants of 
Aztec Indians and Spanish buccaneers; sending 
them in against certain failure, only to take them 
out against a failure more certain still. The Mexi- 
cans all along have known us to be cowards. Now 
they know us to be fools as well. 

"And so confident are they now in this oft- 
proven belief that this time they don't even wait for 
us to get our soldiers out before they make another 
raid across the border and use their American arms 
and American ammunition to kill more Americans 
on American soil! 

"And why should they not? Haven't Americans 
been raided and murdered along the border for the 
past three years or more, to the military glory and 
financial aggrandisement of the raider and mur- 



SCARS AND STRIPES 35 

derer? Haven't American soldiers been fired on 
with impunity; because, forsooth, they were under 
orders from Washington not to return the fire? 
What wonder, then, that they consider an Ameri- 
can citizen successful prey; and an American sol- 
dier but a moving target ? 

"No wonder the game laws are off ! No wonder 
it's an open season for Americans along the Mexi- 
can border ! Haven't they shot them sitting, or on 
the wing? Haven't they shot them in the breeding 
season, and even on the nest? And all with little 
said and less done! 

"We provide game wardens for our deer, our 
duck and our partridge. For our citizens we pro- 
vide nothing. 

"And the laws are going to stay off; the open 
season will remain open; more Americans will be 
killed, American men, American women, American 
children, and on American soil ; and no twelve thou- 
sand men are going to stop it, no matter how 
brave; nor are they going to stop it in twelve 
months, no matter how efficient ; and no amount of 
purblind palaver with provisional presidents is 
going to put an end to it, for a Mexican president 
is as evanescent as inspiration, and as transitory as 
style. Nor is the matter to be corrected by any 
amount of nice, typewritten notes, no matter how 



36 SCARS AND STRIPES 

full of resounding phraseology anent the nobler 
duties of mankind and the higher laws of humanity. 
The one conception of humanity of the average 
Mexican is that it's something to be raped, robbed 
and ravished. The only thing they understand is 
physical force, and plenty of it. And, until we pre- 
pare ourselves both physically and mentally to ad- 
minister that force, we can make up our minds, 
and make 'em up now, that just so long will Ameri- 
can men, American women and American children 
be slaughtered, and on American soil. Pray God 
it won't be done any longer with American guns 
and American ammunition. That much, at least, 
we can prevent. 

"So much for Mexico. For Germany what? 

"They have answered our latest note; number 
67,706 or whatever it is. They have taken their 
own good time to answer it; and they have an- 
swered it in the tone and spirit that best suited 
them. But the note is meant only in the slightest 
degree for us; for the Germans feel toward us a 
good deal as the Mexicans do. To the Germans 
we are something to which to write notes for the 
rest of the world to read ; and when Germany feels 
that it is not to her interest to bother with us any 
further, then she'll ignore us, as we deserve. Just 



SCARS AND STRIPES 37 

at present Germany feels like using us for a sound- 
ing-board to talk peace under, and as a means of 
embarrassing England. If, later, she decides to use 
us for something else, she'll use us; if not, she 
won't. If, later, she finds out it's to her advantage 
to refrain from the further murder of American 
citizens, she'll refrain; if not, she'll continue. But 
whatever she does, or does not, do, we can be 
sure, and very sure, of one thing: that the course 
she will pursue will be taken only because it is to 
her interest to take it, and not from any respect or 
consideration of us. 

"For under our present leaders and in our now 
state of helplessness, Germany does not fear us any 
more than she respects us; nor does she respect us 
any more than she fears us. And why should she ? 
Haven't we been a playground for her propaganda 
ever since the war began? Don't her spies and 
secret agents know more about our country than 
do we ourselves? We have answered her insults 
with notes; we have met her abuses with more 
notes; and we have greeted the murder of our 
citizens with wind backed up by nothing but more 
wind. Why should she respect us? Why should 
she consider us? As well respect a typewriter and 
consider a fountain-pen! 

"And of one other thing can we be sure: That 



38 SCARS AND STRIPES 

when this war is over, and the nations of Europe 
all get together to rearrange international affairs, 
we'll enter into things about as vividly as a one- 
legged man at a dance. While they are sitting 
around dividing up all the plums of shipping and 
trade and finance, we'll be pestering around on the 
outside trying to plead past acquaintance as an 
excuse to get in to the festivities. 

" 'Who's the old guy with the chin piece that's 
trying to horn in?' says England. 

" 'You mean the stringy old lad with the striped 
pants and the plug hat?' says Russia. 'Seems to 
me I've seen him somewhere/ 

"'Oh,' says Italy, 'that's only old Uncle Sam. 
Don't pay no attention to him/ 

" 'Used to be quite a lad, didn't he ?' says Russia. 

" 'Yes,' says France, 'but he don't amount to any- 
thing now/ 

"'No?' says little Sylvester J. Serbia, shoving 
Bulgaria into his pants pocket. 'I thought he was 
quite some pumpkins/ 

" 'He was once,' says France. 'I helped him out 
one time when he was a young feller. I thought 
then he'd turn out to be a regular man/ 

"'Didn't he?' says little Albert Belgium, inter- 
estedly. 



SCARS AND STRIPES 39 

"The other nations all look at each other and 
have a good laugh. 

" 'Why/ says one, 'that poor old lady ain't got 
as much manhood as a setting hen. He stayed 
home and hid under a feather-bed while the trouble 
was going on. Now it's over, he wants to be in/ 

" 'He's making so much noise I can hardly think/ 
says another. 'Set the dog on him !' 

" 'I would/ says a third, 'only I don't want to 
insult the dog. I'll set a mouse instead.' 

"So they chase the poor old man off home, and 
he swims across the ocean, having a terrible battle 
with a jellyfish on the way over, and then he buys 
himself five hundred sheets of writing-paper, and 
a box of carbons, and a new typewriter ribbon, 
and sits down to play the only kind of a game he 
knows how; and thereafter, when it comes to a 
conference on international affairs, they don't even 
ask him what he thinks he thinks about it. And at 
state dinners, where in other days he used to be 
right up among the face-cards, he now finds himself 
sitting just to the left of China, betw r een Patagonia 
and Iceland. 

"And that's what these men at Washington have 
done to your Uncle Sam, to my Uncle Sam, to the 
Uncle Sam of a hundred million more of us; to the 
Uncle Sam that through all these years of blood 



40 SCARS AND STRIPES 

and iron, of peace and happiness, of toil and moil 
and joy and sorrow we've worked for, and strug- 
gled for, and loved and honoured and respected; 
to the Uncle Sam of our fathers and our fathers' 
fathers before them; to the Uncle Sam with the 
face and heart of a Lincoln, the mind and strength 
of a Jefferson, the soul and faith of a Washington! 
So low as this they've dragged him. . . . Poor, 
poor Uncle Sam! 

"And for all their misrepresentation, for all their 
emasculation, for the white robes of cowardice in 
which they have wound him, for all the meaning- 
less, bombastic phraseology they have placed be- 
tween his fine, firm lips, do these men at Washing- 
ton have but one excuse to offer : that they keep us 
out of war! 

"Certainly we keep out of war. So does a steer 
in a slaughter-house. 

"There are lots of things that keep out of war, 
keep out consistently, persistently, congenitally. 
Woolly lambs keep out of war. So do angle- 
worms. So do jellyfish. So do sunflowers, and 
Stilton cheeses and hard-boiled eggs. To boast that 
you have kept out of war is like boasting that you 
have never had scarlet fever. It means either that 
you have never been exposed to its influence, or 
that, exposed, you were sufficiently strong to throw 



SCARS AND STRIPES 41 

it off. But for a man to stand around and boast 
that he's never had scarlet fever when his wife and 
children are dying with it, that is certainly a whole 
lot too many for me! 

"It's on a par with the conversation of these 
people who talk against preparedness. 

"Preparedness, and I mean military and naval 
preparedness, has always been as much a part of 
the lives of Americans as the air they breathed, or 
the food they ate. 

"When the Colonists landed in Virginia, they 
carried gun and powder, bullet and sword. When 
the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, they were 
armed; yet they too were godly men, and good. 
The fact that they carried arms did not make them 
kill Indians. It was the fact that they carried guns 
that prevented the Indians from killing them. 

"Preparedness, to our ancestors, was the very 
germ of life. Without it they would never have 
lived long enough to give birth to descendants who 
in turn gave birth to us. 

"At Concord and Lexington it was the same, 
and throughout the war that wrung us full-born 
from the womb of England to become a people 
great and free to enjoy the liberty that is now ours 
to use, and to abuse. . . . 

"And in the Civil War. Suppose, when this coun- 



42 SCARS AND STRIPES 

try had that to face, that the people of the North, 
instead of preparing (belatedly, to be sure, as they 
did, and suffering from that belatedness as they 
needs must), had sat back fatly and complacently 
and written notes about it? Why, had the North 
acted as these pacificists want us to act now, all that 
the South would have had to do would have been 
to put an advertisement in the New York papers 
warning all Northerners that the South was in a 
state of war, and that if they didn't want to get 
killed, they'd better stay at home. That would have 
settled the whole thing right there. Of course the 
country would have been busted wide open in the 
middle. But what's a little thing like that to a 
pacifist? 

"Why, preparedness has been the one thing that 
conceived this country, that carried it, and that gave 
it birth. To preparedness we owe everything we 
have and everything we are. To the armed protec- 
tion that our ancestors gave us to do we owe the 
peace that has given us the opportunity to grow and 
expand and develop. To it we owe our freedom 
of speech and religion. To it we owe our national 
wealth and prosperity. All that we have come to 
be, all that we have come to own, we owe to mili- 
tary preparedness and naval; to the fact that we 
were too strong physically to be attacked with im- 



SCARS AND STRIPES 43 

punity. Preparedness and this country's history 
have always been as inseparable as a man and his 
heart's blood. And yet at this time, when more 
than ever in our country's history is it needed, there 
are people who talk about cutting it off as though 
it were a vermiform appendix or a couple of ade- 
noids. 

"I tell you, it's got me going. It's unbelievable. 
It's so unbelievable as to be incomprehensible ! 

"It's like knowing a lot of folks well all your 
life, finding them reasonable and sane on every 
topic, and then suddenly having them start a loud 
and noisy argument with you on the contention that 
the human race is better off without food. 

"To be sure, they've always eaten food. Their 
ancestors ate it before them. There's always been 
food for them ^ver since they were born. Food 
has been as much a part of their lives as air, or 
water. Nevertheless, all of a sudden, they begin 
this outcry against it. 

"You're sitting down to a modest meal of scram- 
bled eggs and lima beans, topped off with a hunk 
of huckleberry pie, when in hop your friends. 

"On seeing you thus draped against the festive 
board, they stand aghast. 

" 'What !' they cry, in accents horrified. 'You 
aren't eating!' 






44 SCARS AND STRIPES 

" 'A modicum/ you reply. Won't you sit down 

and ' 

"But they all have thrown up their hands in 
helpless anguish. 

"'What's the matter?' you ask. 
For a minute, they can't speak. 
; Don't you know/ they gasp at length, 'that 
eating is the Most Terrible Thing in the World?' 
" 'Is it?' you ask, dropping your fork. 'In what 
way?' 

In the first place/ they answer, 'it costs money/ 
Well/ you answer brightly, 'I can afford it. 
And since it makes for the protection of my health 
and strength, as well as putting me in shape to 
perform my arduous duties in the potato patch ' 






tt c 



ti r 



But look at them people across the pond/ they 
interrupt, excitedly, 'that Hohenzollern family!' 

What about 'em?' you ask. 

Why, haven't you heard ?' they cry. 'They've 
got gout and indigestion and cirrhosis of the liver 
and everything, and they're having the rottenest 
time! And it's all from over-eating!' 

" 'That isn't the fault of the food,' you argue. 
'It's the fault of the individual. You can't blame 
the food for making them sick any more than when 
a man cuts himself with a razor you can blame the 
razor/ 



SCARS AND STRIPES 45 

"But will they listen to you? Hardly! They 
leave you flat as being too hopelessly feeble-minded 
to argue with, and go out on the street, telling how 
Food is a Terrible Thing because it costs money, 
and the fact that you've got a barrel of molasses in 
the house makes you try to gulp it all up at once 
instead of saving it up to put on flapjacks, and how 
poor Mr. So-and-So like to eat himself to death the 
other night because his son brought home eight cab- 
bages and a wagon load of pumpkins, and about old 
Mrs. What's-Her-Name that foundered herself be- 
cause it rained and filled up the cistern and she 
hadn't the moral courage to resist seeing that much 
water around without trying to drink it all. 

"The question of preparedness has always 
seemed so clear and simple to me that I can't under- 
stand everybody not seeing it. What is life any- 
way but preparedness? What is preparedness but 
life? Why, without preparedness, you and I and 
everybody else would be dead in a week. 

"Look at your own daily life. What do you do 
the first thing when you get up in the morning? 
You put on your clothes. And if that isn't pre- 
paredness, what is it? 

"And suppose you should decide on being un- 
prepared and go out without them? You'd catch 
pneumonia, get arrested and die in a police station ; 



46 SCARS AND STRIPES 

though if you didn't believe in preparedness, there 
wouldn't be any police station ; for what is a police 
station but preparedness? So you'd die in the 
street. . . . No. Wrong again. There wouldn't 
be any street; for streets are preparedness, too; 
preparedness to make travel easy; so you'd die in 
a field somewhere. No, there wouldn't be any 
fields; for fields are preparedness against raising 

crops; and so Wait a minute. If you didn't 

believe in preparedness, you wouldn't have had any 
clothes in the first place; neither would your an- 
cestors; and you wouldn't have had any schools, for 
schools are preparedness against ignorance; nor 
churches, for churches are preparedness for moral 
and religious betterment ; so you wouldn't have had 
any religion or morals. So you see, if you really 
begin to chase the idea of unpreparedness back to 
its origin, you'd be covered with hair, and living in 
a cave and eating raw meat and mangel wurzels. 

"And if, even in those days, you were still con- 
sistent and refused firmly and irreligiously to equip 
yourself with a stone hatchet, or a club with knobs 
on the end, along would come a dinosaur, or an 
ichthyosaurus, or similar faunal monstrosity, and 
you wouldn't have been at all in the first place. 
And there you are! 

"But admitting, which I don't, that you reached 



SCARS AND STRIPES 4*7 

your present state in spite of preparedness, what 
then? 

"We'll suppose that, on arising, it's your custom 
to take a bath. Why? Preparedness. Prepared- 
ness against disease. You dress. Preparedness 
against taking cold, or outraging the sensibilities of 
the community. You eat breakfast. Preparedness 
against hunger and for efficiency. Then you ask 
your wife for a nickel. Preparedness against hav- 
ing to walk down town. Then you go to work. 
Preparedness against earning money to pay your 
bills and buy yourself the food and clothes that 
prepare your body against privation. Then you 
eat lunch. Preparedness against more hunger. 
Then you work some more. Preparedness against 
losing your job. Then you eat dinner. Prepared- 
ness so that you can enjoy your evenings rest or 
pleasure. Then you go to the theatre, or play cards, 
or dance. Preparedness against all work and no 
play making Jack a dull boy. Then you go home 
and go to bed. Preparedness so that you'll be 
strong enough to go to work the next day, or fish- 
ing if it happens to be Sunday. You exercise to 
prepare your body for its duties. You rest for the 
same reason. You read and go to school for the 
purpose of preparing your brain to cope with other 
brains. 



48 SCARS AND STRIPES 

"You have a house to prepare against exposure. 
You buy an umbrella to prepare against rain. You 
pay taxes to pay for the police force, which is pre- 
paredness against crime, and the fire department, 
which is preparedness against fire. And you have 
doctors who are preparedness against death, and 
undertakers who are preparedness for it. 

"And then the main argument of the pacifists is 
that having arms makes you want to fight ! 

"Does having clothes make you never want to 
undress? Does having a bath-tub make you never 
want to get out of it? Does having a job make 
you want to work all the time? Does having an 
umbrella make you pray for rain? 

"You might as well say that having doctors 
makes you want to be sick, and having undertakers 
makes you want to die! 

"And it is primarily in this question of prepared- 
ness that we are so wrong, so horribly, so pitifully, 
so dangerously wrong. 

"We are unprepared. And how unprepared, 
God only knows. For not only are we unprepared 
in an army and a navy; we are unprepared as well 
physically, mentally, morally. That is why we have 
shirked and dodged and sidestepped our responsi- 
bilities. That is why we have shifted and turned 
and twisted every new obligation that has come to 



SCARS A^D STRIPES 49 

meet us. That is why we have borrowed big troubles 
to pay little ones. Anything to avoid doing our 
duty ! Anything to avoid fulfilling our obligations ! 
Anything, no matter how shameful, to avoid facing 
our responsibilities! 

"We, with all our talk of the higher rights of 
humanity, and the nobler duties of mankind ! Who 
in heaven's name are we? Let God look after the 
higher rights of humanity. Let God take care of 
the nobler duties of mankind. If we can only help 
Him by helping ourselves, we'll be doing a whole 
lot more in the future than we have in the past. 
For the sum total of all that we have accomplished 
under our present leaders (God save the mark!) 
in two long years is to borrow big troubles to pay 
off little ones! Not one solitary thing have we 
settled. Not one issue that does not remain to be 
faced, and not one of these issues that has not 
grown an hundredfold in menace, in danger and 
in potential ruin. For the little fire becomes a holo- 
caust. The lion cub becomes full grown. Murder, 
unchecked, becomes massacre. And the cancer of 
the body politic, no less than of the body physical, 
if let alone will rot the vitals that carry it. . . . 

" 'But what course is open to them,' you ask, 
'these men at Washington? What should they do?' 
What should any man do whose employer fails 



a 



50 SCARS AND STRIPES 

to give him the tools with which to work? He 
should go to his employer and ask him for those 
tools. He should say, 'I have a task to do, but I 
have nothing with which to do it. Give me tools, 
and I will work; else will it be your fault if the 
task remains undone; for botch it I will not/ 

"And then, if the work be not done, it is clear 
who is to blame. 

"But these men at Washington, is that what they 
do? Not exactly. Instead, they fill the air with 
vain and futile words! They rush in with a nut- 
pick when they need a crow-bar, and then come out 
to get a nail-file! They hop in here, only to hop 
out there! They belch forth words one minute 
only to eat them the next ! They talk about protect- 
ing humanity when they can't protect even the 
smallest of their own villages; and they talk about 
the nobler duties of mankind when they haven't 
performed even the smallest and meanest of their 
own. And the heavens ring with their resounding 
rhetoric when you could write a complete list of 
their achievements on a gnat's eyelid. 

"What should these men at Washington do? 
They should put up, or shut up. Inelegant it may 
be; but it is the truth. 

"And meanwhile, fat, flamboyant and futile we 
sit here while our dead call to us from unmarked 



SCARS AND STRIPES 51 

graves; while suffering and torture and horrors 
unnameable lie upon every side. With Mexico we 
have intruded and then evaded until she lies a bleed- 
ing pulp. With Germany we have quibbled and 
squabbled while our men, our women and our little 
babies have been flung into the blood-red maw of 
her god of war. From right, from wrong, from 
truth, from falsehood, from justice, from injustice, 
from humanity, from inhumanity, have we stood 
alike aloof. And, after two long years, still have 
we no means of any kind to fight for the one, or 
against the other; still have we no means to pro- 
tect our women from rape or our children from 
murder. Still have these men at Washington left 
us so supine, so abject, so pitiful, that a Mexican 
bandit can come on American soil, murder Ameri- 
can men, American women, American children and, 
going Scot-free, turn to laugh at us in our pitiable 
helplessness. 

"Is there any answer to that, save one? Truly 
I cannot see it. The people of Columbus were law- 
abiding, and had set a high moral example. It 
did not prevent them from being killed. Also some 
of them were armed. But it had not made them 
aggressive. But they were inadequately armed. 
Hence were they dragged from their beds and slain, 
murdered in cold blood, while a nation of one hun- 



52 SCARS AND STRIPES 

dred million people stood powerless to save them; 
as it now stands powerless to prevent others like 
them from being murdered even as were these. 
Even as that nation has stood helpless to see Ger- 
many murder its citizens at sea, and still stands 
helpless against other murders that yet may well be. 

"You're an American. I'm an American. And 
there are a hundred million more of us, as proud 
and glad to be Americans as you and I ; loving the 
word as much; as proud of our country and as 
jealous of her honour and good name; willing to 
fight for her, and die for her, to protect and guard 
the freedom and liberty for which our fathers 
fought and died ; glorying in her patience and her 
power, her gentleness and her dignity, her kindness 
and her strength. 

"How long, then, can we endure to be so help- 
less? How long can we endure to be so abject? 
How long can we endure to be so supine? 

"God knows we do not want war. War is some- 
thing to be dreaded as disease is dreaded, to be 
feared as wild beasts are feared. All we want is 
to be strong, and to be brave; strong enough to 
help the weak that need us, brave enough to defy 
the tyrannical that would outrage us. That is what 
we want, and all. Just that, and no more. 

"This country that is ours was left us by our 



SCARS AND STRIPES 53 

fathers, watered of their blood, freshened of their 
hearts, flowered of their souls. They left this trust 
for men to use, not for cowards to abuse. And if 
we are deserving of the name American; if we 
stand for what they stood; if we love what they 
loved, honour what they honoured and are true to 
what they were true; if life, liberty and the pursuit 
of happiness mean but half as much to us as they 
did to them, then is it now for us to bow our heads 
to God and ask His help to be the men they would 
wish us to be. He knows it is in us to do if we 
but will!" 



CHAPTER TWO 



THE NEUTRAL 



CHAPTER TWO 

THE NEUTRAL 

IT was at the club. Gray was talking ; Drake and 
I listening. 

"I," said Gray, "am neutral." 

I said nothing. What was the use? 

"Here we are," said Gray, "the richest country 
in the world ; contented ; prosperous ; and at peace. 
And if it so happens that, on the other side of the 
world, are a lot of crazy people shooting one an- 
other, and blowing one another up, what business is 
it of ours? Why should we take sides?" 

Drake took up the futile challenge. 

"There's always a right and wrong to every side 
— to every cause," he asserted. "And a man who 
won't fight for the right and fight against the 
wrong, isn't a man ; he's a fish, and a mighty poor 
fish at that." 

"Bah!" said Gray. 

"Do you bah Belgium?" queried Drake. "That 
crime of barbarism against civilisation, that slaugh- 
ter of right by might, that ravaging of humanity 
by bestiality — yes, and worse! for beasts only kill. 

It takes human beings to torture." 

57 



58 SCARS AND STRIPES 

"War is war/' returned Gray. "I suppose the 
aggressors were doing only what they thought was 
for their best ad vantage/ ' 

"Doubtless," returned Drake. "I imagine Cap- 
tain Kidd had much the same excuse." 

He turned directly to Gray. 

"How about the Lusitania" he asked, "and all 
the other submarine massacres? And the Zeppelins? 
The murder from the air of sleeping women and 
children! What extenuation have you for those? 
Any, except the one you've already advanced?" 

Gray crossed his legs. 

"You talk like a magazine article," he said, im- 
patiently. "All we know is that there are a lot of 
nations fighting their heads off, and it's up to us to 
keep out of it, and stay out." 

"Is that all we know?" asked Drake. 

"Well, isn't it?" demanded Gray. 

Drake shook his head. 

"Not quite," he said. "We know that there 
are in Europe a lot of nations that, in modern 
times and under modern conditions, were doing the 
best they could in the best way they could. We 
know that among these nations was another that 
coupled with a national efficiency higher than any 
the world has ever seen, an Idea that was older 
than murder. And that nation, combining as no 



THE NEUTRAL 59 

nation ever has or probably ever will again, the 
brain of an Edison with the soul of an Atilla, has 
gone forth into other lands to ravage and to ravish 
and to rape, with its magnificent equipment of the 
twentieth century — and its brutal ruthlessness of 
the tenth. What is it up to the rest of the world 
to do?" 

"Go to bed and wait for it to get over," returned 
Gray. He rose, impatiently. "For heaven's sake," 
he said, "cut out all this jingo talk. You're one 
of these Americans that are going to help get us 
mixed up in this thing. What business is it of ours 
what they do in Europe? We're out of it, and if 
only we behave like sensible people instead of like 
a lot of darned fools, we can keep out. 

"Here we are," he continued, "three thousand 
miles away. The country was never so pros- 
perous; business never in better shape; everybody 
making plenty of money; everything going along 
great. And now you, and a lot of people like you, 
want to gum up the whole thing by horning in and 
taking sides and hollering your heads off for armies 
and navies and things! 

"What do you mean, you folks that yell for pre- 
paredness, for a big army, and a big navy? Haven't 
you got sense (enough to know that big armies and 
big navies cost a lot of money? Do you want to 



60 SCARS AND STRIPES 

go and get your taxes increased, and the price of 
everything raised? Do you want to give up your 
business, and leave your home, and go and serve in 
the army?" 

Drake nodded. 

"If necessary," he said, quietly, 

"Well, I don't," said Gray. "And these people 
that aren't satisfied to let well enough alone; that 
aren't satisfied to stay at home and attend to their 
own business and let the rest of the world attend 
to its, make me sore. And the ones that make me 
particularly sore are those fool Americans that go 
abroad knowing that war exists and that they're 
liable to be blown up, and then put up a holler when 
it happens to 'em. If they don't want to get tor- 
pedoed, why don't they stay at home, the darned 
fools?" 

He grunted, disgustedly. 

"They couldn't get me over there, you can bet 
your sweet life," he said. "No, sir! I'm neutral," 
he went on, "and I'm going to stay neutral. And 
furthermore, I'm going to stay at home and mind 
my own business. I should worry about Europe! 
They got themselves into all this mess. Let them 
get themselves out." 

A boy came in. 

"Cable for you, Mr. Gray," he said. 



THE NEUTRAL 61 

Gray took the envelope; tore it open; unfolded 
the single sheet it contained, and read. . . . His 
eyes squinted. .He took a short breath. 

"Well, my Lord!" he muttered, feebly. "Well, 
for the love of — now what do you know about — 
well, I'm a— well, 111 be dad-blamed!" 

And without a word he rose and walked out of 
the room. 

I met my friend at the dock. He came down the 
gangplank tastefully gowned in a rain coat, a pair 
of carpet-slippers three sizes too big for him, a little 
boy's cap of white canvas around which was a blue 
band bearing in gold the words, La Provence, a 
middy blouse, and a pair of overalls. 

I stared in startled wonderment. Usually he was 
sartorially effulgent. 

He explained as we shook hands. 

"Von Tirpitz," he said. 

"Good heavens!" I cried. "You weren't on the 
America?" 

He nodded. 

"On and off," he said. 

"When they torpedoed her?" 

Again he nodded. 

"Come to my rooms," he said, "and I'll tell you 
about it while I change my clothes. I've been hav- 



62 SCARS AND STRIPES 

ing a terrible time with these things. I can't re- 
member whether I'm a stoker or a look-out. Still, 
blown-ups can't be choosers; and it was very nice 
of the steward, the stewardess, the mess-boy — 
mess being correct — and the crew of the captain's 
g% to give me these things. Otherwise I'd have 
had to stay in bed or run the risk of disorganising 
the morals of the entire ship. . . . 

"Hey! Taxi!" he called; and, casting a cursory 
glance down at his heterogeneous habiliments, he 
remarked, "For once, at least, I feel that I am about 
to enjoy going through the customs." 

At his rooms, bathed, shaven, in fresh and im- 
peccable raiment, he told me what had happened. 
This is how he told it: 

It was just curiosity, I suppose. I wanted to 
go to Europe to see what made it tick. They don't 
pull off a war like this every year, thank God ; and 
I wanted to see what it was doing to the people; 
how they were taking it; and I had a few letters 
that I thought might get me to the fighting. But 
I'll tell you about that some other time. 

Nothing happened on the way over until we got 
about a hundred and fifty miles off the Irish coast. 
It was a nice day. Three of us were playing ship 
golf ; a chap named Henderson, a little lad with eye- 



THE NEUTRAL 63 

glasses and a tummy ; I forgot his name ; and myself. 

I was just squaring away from my drive at the 
fifth hole, which lay between the bitts, with a cap- 
stan for a hazard, when the Little Lad let out a yell. 

"A submarine !" he hollers. 

"What!" I asked, slicing my drive into a flock 
of stokers that had come up for air. 

"Look!" he says, pointing about three degrees 
abaft the lee quarter. Henderson and I looked. 
And sure enough, there was a periscope sticking up 
out of the water and not over half a mile or so — 
anyhow, it was a whole lot too near. 

"Tell the captain!" yells the Little Lad. And 
then, without waiting, he piles up the companion- 
way. He knocks over an old lady and steps entirely 
on a valuable Pekinese and nails the captain just 
as he is coming out of the pilot-house. 

All he can say is, "Look, Cap!" 

It's enough. The Cap looks. 

"Good God!" he says, and busts into the pilot- 
house and, pushing aside the officer in charge, be- 
gins to pull at ropes and handles and gongs and 
things until he looks like a Family of Swiss Bell 
Ringers. 

In about seven seconds there was the most alarm- 
ing alacrity, to say nothing of the most unprece- 
dented celerity, that you ever saw. Looking over 



64 SCARS AND STRIPES 

the rail, I see the flock of stokers disappear down 
a deckhole as one man. It's like chuting coal into 
a cellar. And in another minute, clouds of smoke 
begin to pour out of the funnels; white water is 
whipped up by the screws, and, taking a zig-zag 
course, the ship starts off like a frightened fish. 

And the passengers ! . . . 

It's funny how danger affects different people. 
Some it makes grim and silent; others noisy and 
abusive ; others weak and pitiable ; and still others 
absent-minded and helpless. 

The Old Lady, whose dog the Little Lad had 
stepped on, took a pillow in her arms, and carefully 
placing the Pekinese beneath her, sat down on it 
and began to cry. 

Henderson, who was beside me, said something 
that you couldn't print and stood silent, watching 
tensely, like a spectator at a race. . . . 

A dignified old party who had been taking a 
siesta when the alarm was pulled, came out on deck 
dressed in a silk hat and a union suit. His daughter 
came after him, carrying his pants. He put his 
arms into the legs thereof; and they both thought 
he was dressed. 

But it was the Little Lad with the tummy that 
furnished most of the excitement. He stood by 
the rail, shaking his fist and howling curses, while 



THE NEUTRAL 65 

a female missionary who was returning from her 
vacation, stood beside him and encouraged him 
eagerly to further profanities. 

"You swine!" he yowls, shaking his fist at the 
submarine, now awash and ripping through the 
water behind us. "You double-dashed, triple- 
asterisked, exclamation-point swine! Attack a 
peaceful ship full of non-combatants, would you? 
Why, blankety, blinkety, blunkety blank your triply- 
qualified souls to noun ! You just let me get to land 
and I'll fight you with anything from a lead pipe 
to a supreme court !" 

My, but he was a wonderful cusser! With him, 
it was not a science. It was an art. 

The ship was tearing through the water now, a 
mile this way, a mile that, the bow wave piling in 
huge, white masses that slithered along her sides. 
. . . And back of her was the submarine, dull, sul- 
len, threatening, his back awash in the seas. . . . 

Even as we looked, a little port on top opened. 
. . . Men came out. ... A gun rose from some- 
where ; and a shell came whining over us. . . . 

The Old Lady got up from the dog; but its hope- 
ful expression promptly vanished when she sat 
right down on it again. Henderson muttered an- 
other something. The Dignified Old Party climbed 
into a lifeboat and his daughter followed. 



66 SCARS AND STRIPES 

But it was again the Little Lad by the rail that 
shone. The cussing that he had done before was 
but an amateur tryout to the splendid and truly 
artistic achievements that he now attained. And 
the Female Missionary got behind him and boosted 
hard. She seemed a firm believer in the theory that 
words constitute force. If such had been the case, 
the red hot missiles that the Little Lad was dis- 
charging would have sunk the Queen Elizabeth in 
ten seconds. 

Another shell whined above our heads. It tore 
a hole in the forward funnel and buried itself far 
beyond in the sea. ... And then another. . . . 

I can't tell you how long the chase kept up. An 
hour, perhaps; perhaps two; or maybe three. . . . 
On and on we zigzagged. . . . After us came the 
submarine, firing shell after shell. . . . Three times 
we were hit, but in no vital spot. . . . And every 
time a shell screamed by, the Old Lady would get 
up from the dog and sit down on it again, Hender- 
son would mutter, the Little Lad would boil over, 
and the Dignified Old Party in the plug hat would 
shove his head under a seat of the lifeboat and 
promise his daughter that if she ever wanted to go 
nursing again it would have to be within the three- 
mile limit of South Bend. 



THE NEUTRAL 67 

And then somebody said, "Look !" and this time 
pointed forward. 

It was a British destroyer. She had got our 
wireless and was shooting towards us like a tor- 
pedo, smoke lying flat behind her, spray shooting 
over her tiny stacks. . . . 

I have seen many beautiful sights in my time—* 
the Alps, sunset in the Sahara, the Grand Canon, 
Rio Janeiro harbour and the Bank of England. But 
I want to tell you, my son, that the sight of that 
low, lean, hungry-looking destroyer made all the 
rest of 'em look like a wet afternoon in Lincoln, 
Nebraska. I wanted to have her picture taken and 
wear it in a locket ! 

The submarine saw it, too. With a parting shot, 
she turned and wallowed away, slowly sinking be- 
neath the water. . . . The Little Lad sent it on its 
journey with a parting volley of curse-words, husky 
but deeply sincere. Henderson threw back his 
head, straightening tense shoulders. The Old Lady 
looked at the pillow she was hugging; gazed about 
her perplexedly; got up; picked up her flattened 
pet; and started in to readjust it into its former 
spherical shape. The Dignified Old Party climbed 
down out of the life-boat. His daughter got a 
peep at him; said, "Ah!" shrilly, and both stepped 
hastily into the en$ine-roc*ti. 



68 SCARS AND STRIPES 

The Little Lad asked the first officer if the cap- 
tain of the destroyer was coming aboard. He said 
he wanted to kiss him. . . . 

It was while we were warping into the dock. 

The Little Lad with the Tummy was standing be- 
side me, his travelling-bag in his hand. 

"Know anybody over here?" he asked me. "I 
mean, anybody of any account ?" 

I told him that I had some letters to people that 
rawthah mattahed. 

"I've got a tough job ahead of me/ 5 he said; 
"good and tough." He paused. "It's my daughter," 
he went on. "She was in a motor smash-up a little 
over a year ago. When help came all the others 
were there, but she was gone. The only explana- 
tion that any one has ever been able to give is that 
she was hit on the head and lost her memory. 

"A week ago I got word that she was in a hos- 
pital, in Switzerland — Geneva. She had been 
found wandering about in the streets in a dazed 
condition, and they had taken her in. The message 
said that while she was still far from well, she had 
got back her memory enough to tell them who 
she was. . . . That's my reason for coming over. 
. . . And now the thing is to find a way for me to 
get to Geneva and bring her back with me." 

"I think I can fix it," I said. I told him where 



THE NEUTRAL 69 

I was to stay. "Come around to-morrow evening, 
about nine." 

He wrung my hand. 

"You won't be sorry," he said. "She's a wonder- 
ful girl, that daughter of mine. . . . Like her 
mother. . . . You must come to see us, when we 
all get back home again." 

I said Td be glad to go. And we joined in the 
stream of debarking passengers. . . . 

I had a lot to attend to next day. But I managed 
to arrange so that he should get a pass to Geneva, 
and to get a letter that would enable him to bring 
his daughter back to England when she got well 
enough to make the trip. 

The next night, at about nine, I was sitting in 
the lobby of the hotel, waiting for him, when all of 
a sudden I heard a gun go off. Bang! And then 
another; and almost immediately a whole flock of 
'em. 

At which the bell-boys, the porters, a covey of 
chambermaids, a couple of clerks and all the cus- 
tomers poured out of the lobby and into the street. 
I detained a uniformed menial long enough to ask 
him the cause of the noise and the ensuing exodus. 

"Zeps !" he yells, and off he goes. 

"Zeps?" I says. And then a light breaks in upon 
me. 



70 SCARS AND STRIPES 

"Oh," I think. "He means Zeppelins!" 

And then, as if to corroborate my discovery, 
"WHANG!!" A bomb! The whole sky was lit 
up with a flash like a million bolts of lightning. 
And the noise that accompanied sounded like the 
explosion that would result if you poured the At- 
lantic ocean into hell. . . . You could hear glass 
crashing, and pieces of pavement. ... A dull rum- 
bling as the fronts of houses caved in. 

I rushed out into the street. It was crowded 
with people, half-stunned, dazed. 

Just down the block it had happened. There was 
a hole in the pavement that you could have buried 
a whale in. The fronts were torn from four or 
five houses. . . . 

It had killed a couple of children asleep in bed. 
. . . The mangled body of one was lying shattered 
against the jagged wall, blown against it so hard 
that it stuck there. . . . Bright blood was oozing 
from beneath yellow curls, to run down a sun- 
kissed little cheek. . . . We saw it in the light of 
the burning house next door, from which came first 
screams, then groans — then silence. . . . 

And an old woman had been killed while alight- 
ing from an omnibus. . . . 

And in the morning would come the report: 



THE NEUTRAL 71 

Last night our air craft again attacked the forti- 
fied city of London, with the usual completely satis- 
factory results. 

Two fortified children asleep in a fortified bed! 

A fortified old lady alighting from a fortified 
omnibus ! 

And that's what they call war! 

We helped bring down the children — dead little 
bodies still warm with the little lives that so swiftly, 
so terribly, had been taken from them. . . . We 
laid them on the sidewalk, before the torn front 
of what had been their home. . . . Their mother 
and their father, stunned to unconsciousness, came 
to their senses. . . . They saw their dead. . . . 
Little dead hands limp. . . . Little dead eyes star- 
ing sightlessly straight up at the monster that slug- 
gishly wheeled, and turned, and made ready for 
more murder — more, and more, and more. . . . 
The father stood there, his fingers twitching. . . . 
God mercifully took again the mother's senses. . . ,., 

The policeman beside me was cursing thickly. 
I looked at him. He was crying. . . . 

He saw me looking. He blinked, apologetically. 

f Tve two of me own," he mumbled. "Little 
tykes, too — like them." 



72 SCARS AND STRIPES 

He needn't have apologised for crying. . . . 
He was not alone. 

Came from behind us, somewhere in the firelight 
gloom, a man's voice. It sounded strangely famil- 
iar. 

"For the love of heaven/' it howled, "take this 
triply-qualified, quadruply-adjectived blinkety- 
blankety blunk thing off me so's I can get at 'em. 
First the doubly blanked dashes try to blow me up ; 
and then they try to blow me down, double-dash 
'em. I only wish to blank I was an angel! I'd 
show 'em a few tricks about flying around and 
dropping things on people!" 

Yes, it was the Little Lad. He had been coming 
along in a cab. And the manner in which the 
cataclysm had distributed things had left the cab 
on top of him and the horse on top of that. But 
I'll give him credit. When we rolled the debris off 
him, he came to his feet with a spoke in each hand. 

And, drawing back, he slammed first one, and 
then the other, at the great, sluggish monster there 
in the air, a mile above him ! . . . And everything 
he called it, and everything he said about the men 
that conceived, and made, and operated it, was true! 

I took him to my rooms and straightened him 
out, told him what I had done for him, and, with 



THE NEUTRAL 73 

thanks in which curses were strangely mingled, he 
departed. 

I was so busy the next few weeks, that I plumb 
forgot all about the Little Lad. Imagine my sur- 
prise then, when, on mounting the gang-plank of 
the America for the return /trip, I bumped right 
into him. 

"Now what the " he began. Then he saw 

who it was and let out a whoop. 

"I got her all right !" he yells, excitedly. "Look !" 

He brought her beside him — his daughter. In- 
terestedly, I did as he bade. 

He had said that she was pretty. It was a cal- 
umny. For she was more than pretty — much more. 
Grey eyes, she had, clear and soft, with the frank- 
ness of a child's — and the gentleness of a woman's. 
And the hand that she laid in mine was little and 
warm and firm. . . . Dogs and horses and children 
would have loved her — which means far more than 
the love of men and women. Children and animals 
love with their hearts ; men and women confuse that 
love with brains. 

She was about twenty, I suppose. I'm telling 
you all this about her because — because — well, I'm 
a tough old bachelor; but it's not from choice, and 
when I saw her . . . There are women, and women. 
Some you never know. Others, the minute you see 



74 SCARS AND STRIPES 

them, you feel as though you'd come home; that 
you could tell them the things that lie in every man 
untold; that in them lie Rest, and Peace and Hap- 
piness, and all the things that make life worth liv- 
ing. . . . That was the kind she was. . r . . The 
only one in all the world I've ever met . . . 

I don't know how long I stood looking into her 
eyes. Hers did not turn. 

We moved to the deck. The Little Lad was fuss- 
ing around. He had a steward bring a chair for 
me, and put it next to theirs. 

"And I'll fix you at our table/' he said to me, 
over his shoulder, as he passed ; "that is, if you're 
alone. If it hadn't been for you, God knows how 
I'd ever have got her here." 

He pinched her cheek. 

"Love the old man?" he asked. His voice broke 
a little. 

She looked up, eyes brimming. 

"Daddy!" she said, softly; and she kissed him. 
... A child she was — and yet a woman. . . . 

We sat up late that night, talking, in the moon- 
light. . . . God knows all I said to her. . . . Little 
thoughts that I had held hidden in the storehouse 
of my soul since time began I took down from 
their shelves and laid before her. . . . Because I 
knew that no matter how poor they might be, she 



THE NEUTEAL 75 

would not despise, nor laugh, nor criticise, but would 
Understand. ... In every man's soul they lie, 
these thoughts ; in most they die, unborn. . . . 

The Little Lad fell asleep. . . . We talked on. 
. . . She let me look a little into her soul, too. . . . 
It made me ashamed of the smallness of my own. 
... And she was very beautiful. ... 

The next day, while we were at lunch, it hap- 
pened. There was no warning — nothing! . . . 
Peaceful men and women, in a great ship, on the 
great sea that God has given alike to all His people. 
r . • . . And then the devil with his hell . . . 

An explosion that shook the ship to its heart. 
-. . -. Flame, smoke, and flying bits of metal and 
wood and human flesh. ... A maelstrom of piti- 
ful, frightened women, horror-bitten men, and help- 
less, whimpering children that did not understand. 
. . -. God? How could they understand? When 
you can't, nor can I! ... To kill in the heat 
of battle, yes. . . . But deliberately, thinkingly, 
calmly to set about in cold blood to murder peaceful, 
unarmed men, helpless, gentle women, and little 
children fresh from the arms of the God that sent 
them through love and pain to live upon His 
earth. . . . 

To slaughter these as mercilessly as one would 
stick a pig! And without even that excuse for 



76 SCARS AND STRIPES 

■ ■ ■ ■■■ i i i 

slaughter. For pigs are killed to be eaten. But 
why do they slaughter children? I don't know. 
Nor do you. . . . But perhaps God knows. Per- 
haps they have told him. They seem much in His 
confidence. 

Through all the awful inferno, we rushed to the 
deck, the father and I, the daughter between us., 
. . . The ship was listing heavily. . . . People 
rushed about screaming, wailing, begging for 
mercy, praying to God to save them from the awful 
death that had come so swiftly, so fiendishly upon 
them. ... I#J . 

And there, across the sunlit waters, lay that 
death; a dull, sullen, unclean monster, wallowing 
swinishly. . . . There were men upon its slimy 
back. . . . Men that stood calmly watching while 
fear-tortured women threw their babies into the 
sea and flung themselves in after. . . . 

The lifeboats on the port side could not be 
used ; the list was so great that it had swung them 
inboard. . . . The number one boat on the star- 
board side had filled with swarming, terror-stricken 
souls. ... It began to descend. . . . The block 
on one of the davits jammed. . . . The human con- 
tents, struggling, slipping, screaming, fell in little 
clusters into the sea. . . . You have shaken cater- 
pillars from a limb? ... It was like that. Only 



THE NEUTRAL 77 

these were human beings, like you and me. Re- 
member that. 

Another boat, half-filled, had lowered and put 
aw r ay. . . . People threw themselves after it; to 
miss and disappear in the tortured waters. ... A 
third was loading. We fought to reach it; but 
those about us were too many, and too mad. 

She looked up at me, the girl by my side. 

"It's no use," she said. "And I am not afraid to 
die." 

The ship gave a lurch. We seized the rail, to 
keep our feet. 

The father, jaw set, eyes narrowed, looked 
swiftly about. 

"She's going," he said, grimly. "Jump!" 

There came a rush of waters, like a thousand 
Niagaras. I tried my best to hold her. She was 
torn from my hands as one might tear a feather 
from a child's. . . . Down I went, down and down. 
. . . My lungs were bursting. ... I came once 
again to the surface where was God's sunlight — and 
the bodies of men and women. There were pieces 
of her sleeves in each of my hands. 

I tried to find her. There were bodies every- 
where. A man's, torn in two parts, floating in a 
circle of red-blue water. ... A woman's, with a 
baby tight against its breast, her dead arms about 



78 SCARS AND STRIPES 

its dead body, its little dead fingers clasped about 
her neck. . . . Bubbling, horrid screams! Low, 
bubbling wails. . . . 

I saw Her. She was clinging, twenty feet away, 
to a bit of wreckage. But bodies lay between. 

I fought them. If you have never fought the 
dead, don't long to. . . . Hell has nothing new to 
show me now. 

I was almost at her side. . . . Her hands slipped 
from the bit of wreckage to which she clung; she 
had been long ill, you know. . . . Her head sunk 
beneath the water. 

Three bodies lay between us. I remember the 
first. It's dead face came full against my own as 
I fought it away. It was very like my mother's. 
. . . The same kind eyes, the same gentle lips, the 
same loving-kindness that had lived within before 
— before this awful cataclysm of war came. . . . 

But I fought even that, too. I fought that, and 
the next. And but one lay between as Her face 
came again to the sunlight. . . . Her dark hair 
floated about her in the water, like some strange, 
silken seaweed. . . . God, how I fought to reach 
her ! . . . She saw me. . . . Grey, clear eyes looked 
into my own, the eyes that were of a woman-child. 

She saw me. She smiled, a little. . . . Again 



THE NEUTRAL 79 

the water crept above her lips. But the eyes still 
looked. The lips beneath the water still smiled. 

I think I struck the body that lay between us. 
... I was quite mad, now. ... I fought it as 
though it were alive, some brutal, unclean Thing 
that held me from my own while it did murder. At 
length I won. I flung tny self past it. 

But she was gone. Where she had been, was 
only water. . . • 

That's all I remember. They told me afterward 
that I was picked up by one of the boats which 
drifted about until La Provence came. 

My friend finished. He sat, looking out the win- 
dow into the gathering dusk. 

"Good God!" I exclaimed. 

He said nothing. 

"And what?" I asked, at length, thinking to turn 
his mind, "became of the girl's father? the Little 
Lad?" 

He shook his head. 

"Drowned, I suppose," he answered. "Drowned 
like all the other Americans that the Beast has mur- 
dered to show us how cultured it is." 

Of a sudden there came from without the sound 
of men fighting. My friend leaned out the window. 

"A row?" I asked. 



80 SCARS AND STRIPES 

■ 

My friend nodded. "Let's go down and look 
it over," he said. "I'd even go to a peace meeting 
to get my mind off what it's seen." 

We descended. 

In the middle of the street a little man with nose 
glasses and running to embonpoint, was seated on 
the back of another man who was lying face down 
on the asphalt. The little man had the other by 
the ears and was addressing him copiously, em- 
phasising his remarks from time to time by bring- 
ing the other's head up and then slamming it, nose 
down, against the pavement. It was a ceremonial 
at once picturesque and remorseless. 

"Why, you double-dashed, triple-asterisked ex- 
clamation point blank!" the little man howled. 
"Why, blinkety, blankety, blunkety blink! I'll 
show you whether " 

My friend gasped. 

"Good heavens!" he cried. "If it isn't the Little 
Lad with the Tummy!" 

I, too, had gasped. For it was also Gray ! Gray, 
of the club ! Gray the pacifist ! Gray the Neutral ! 
Gray, who didn't believe in fighting! 

We rushed to his side. 

"Here, here!" cried my friend. "What do you 
want to do? Kill him? Let the man up ! Let him 
up, I say!" 



THE NEUTRAL 81 

Gray looked at us over his shoulder. 

"Not until the son-of-a-gun gives three cheers 
for Uncle Sam !" he howled. 

He turned again to his victim. 

"D'jer hear that?" he demanded. "Three rous- 
ing cheers now! Three cheers, I say! Cm' on, 
now. One- two-three ! Hip, hip, hooray!" 

The cheers were given. Gray rose to his feet. 
His victim stood not on the order of his going. He 
disappeared even before we had had a good look 
at him. 

Gray dusted off his clothes. 

"I rather think," he said, complacently, "that I 
taught that poor boob something about prepared- 
ness that he won't forget in a hurry." 

"But for goodness' sake," I asked. "What's it 
all about? What were you fighting for, anyway?" 

Gray breathed hard, like an old war horse. 

"Why," he explained, "that triple-blanked pin- 
head was making a speech against preparedness, 
and bawling out Uncle Sam. And I was getting 
hotter and hotter. And then when he came to the 
place where he said that if Americans didn't have 
sense enough to stay at home, they deserved to be 
killed, I boiled over and hopped him." 

Even then I didn't fully understand. It had 
come too suddenly. 



82 SCARS AND STRIPES 

"But," I protested, "I thought you were neu- 
tral?" 

"Neutral be hanged !" he howled. "Wait until I 
can get a steamer back to France! I'll show you 
how neutral I am! To-night I'm forty-four. But 
the first recruiting office I hit will see me swearing 
off years as though they were taxes ! Those triple- 
dashed, quadruply-asterisked blinkety, blankety, 
blunks can't do what they did to me and get away 
with it!" 

His voice changed; changed with a suddenness 
that was almost startling. He brushed the back of 
his hand across his eyes. 

"And I kind of hope they get me at that," he 
said; his voice was so low that it was with diffi- 
culty that I heard. "God knows I haven't much to 
live for now. . . ." 

Still a bit perplexed, I looked at my friend. 

"Why, don't you see?" my friend queried, softly. 
"It was his daughter. ..." 

And then I understood. 



CHAPTER THREE 



"FOR GOD AND KING!" 



■\ 



CHAPTER THREE 

"for god and king!" 

A CERTAIN latter-day sage, from beneath 
the humour of Celtic pseudonym, has as- 
serted that, when reference be made as to service 
for God and king, he would wish to be assured that 
the Senior Member of the firm has been consulted. 

Connection lies between this and that bombastic 
bellow of the Dark Ages that the King can do no 
wrong. Perhaps, in the days when first this cry 
came crashing from the hairy mouths of men whose 
only respect was for a hand more heavy and a 
heart more foul than their own, this was so. Then 
it was that might made right — only the weak of 
body and the meek of soul were w r rong. 

However, antedating by a little the coming of the 
Bible with gold edges, appeared Wrong as we know 
it. But the panoplied phrase persists — as absurdly 
incongruous and as abjectly ridiculous as a knight 
in full armour tilting against a twelve-pound pro- 
jectile; eventually to be as futile. But that is not 
yet; for the human race is young, slothful of mind 

and very ignorant. So the Divine Right that is of 

85 



86 SCARS AND STRIPES 

might still rules to bathe the world in blood. But 
it will pass. 
However — ■— « 

Once upon a time there was a king. He himself 
believed not in Divine Right. It is doubtful if 
there is a king who does. However, his people did 
believe ; and that, to the king, was all that mattered. 

The king did not believe that he could do no 
wrong ; for he had occasional gleams from an atro- 
phying intelligence ; and his conscience, though fast 
dying from the undue burdens it was forced to bear, 
yet was not quite dead, and sometimes called to him 
in the night when he was not too drunk to listen. 
However, as the king's subjects believed that he 
could do no wrong (or, at least, were content not 
to argue the matter) what booted the personal be- 
liefs of the king, who was wise enough to keep 
those beliefs to himself? Any man, even a Di- 
vinely Righted king, were a fool, and worse, to 
question his pleasures. 

Like all kings, this king had a queen. This was 
(for the queen, at least) unfortunate; but it was 
unavoidable; for kings, like stallions, are supposed 
to live mainly for posterity; and queens are only 
queens when nature has blessed them of her func- 
tions. It is but a short step from the royal palace 



"FOR GOD AND KING!" 87 

to the breeding-stables; and even a shorter step 
back again. 

The king loved the queen as much as the stal- 
lion loves the mare; no more. And the queen 

But what difference does it make? She was merely 
a queen. 

The king was with the queen only at times when 
his presence was demanded — levees, and the open- 
ing of bazaars, at celebrations, and at reviews, and 
when little potential kings and queens were born 
into the world. At all other times he did much as 
he chose — always taking excellent care not to upset 
in the minds of his people their theories anent Di- 
vine Right, and the regal incapacity for wrongdo- 
ing. At times, that which the king did caused the 
queen to spend long, wet-eyed, sleepless nights. 
But as she was a queen first and a woman after- 
ward, again it did not matter. How could it ? She 
had been fortunate enough to give birth to seven 
children in seven years. What more ought a queen 
to expect? 

But while the king did not love the queen, there 
was a woman that he did love. He knew that he 
loved her. He knew because he had loved half a 
hundred other women before. And if he loved 
those half hundred, why not this? Could one ask 
for better proof of love than that? 



88 SCARS AND STRIPES 

She was young, this woman; young and very 
beautiful; beautiful of face, beautiful of body. 
Her husband thought that, too, she was beautiful 
of soul. . . . But, like many husbands, he did not 
know his wife very well. He made of her what 
he wanted her to be; and that he loved and wor- 
shipped. 

The king had known many women; he had 
known many husbands. Some were satisfied with 
gold; some with preferment. But this one seemed 
different. His eye was grey and clean; his jaw 
square and set. . . . The king was troubled. . . . 

And then the Great War came. And with it, we 
come to our story. 

They had been rushed to the front. The officer 
in command had received his orders only that 
morning. . . . He had kissed his wife good-bye, 
the while buckling on his revolver. She was very 
beautiful, this wife of his; he loved her as it is 
given few men to love, and few women to be loved ; 
and his grey, clean eyes grew misty as he kissed 
her. . . . Then a confused rushing of armed men, 
marching swiftly through crowded streets, clamber- 
ing into, and on, and over long trains of jammed 
coaches. . . . 

At length their train stopped. There were other 



"for god and king!" 89 

trains, like theirs, many of them. They formed, 
in companies. . . . From God knew where, in all 
the confusion, came orders. And they began to 
advance. 

They met the wounded first, sunken-eyed, wan- 
cheeked, in bloody bandages. . . . Ambulances 
whose floors dripped red upon the bitten road- 
way. . . . There was a far mutter, like distant 
thunder. . . . 

And now the enemy hundreds of them, thousands, 
tens of thousands. . . . Like great, grey snakes they 
were winding their way across the stricken country- 
side, stopping now and then to coil — and then to 
loose those coils and leave the Thing broken, bleed- 
ing, while on they crawled, on, and on, and on 

Wild rumors reeled through the trembling air. 
Could it be stopped — this sullen, relentless, onward 

movement? If not His country, for which 

his fathers had fought, and fought, and died, to 
become a conquered province! The liberties of its 
people to be taken from them! Its men slaugh- 
tered; its women violated! . . . The officer's lean, 
bronzed hand closed over the butt of his automatic; 
his grey eyes gleamed. . . . 

And then the battle! 

One may not tell much of fighting. It is at once 
so incomprehensibly big, and so absurdly little. . . . 



90 SCARS AND STRIPES 

A countryside aflame with the fire and smoke and 
torment of a hundred hells. . . . The buttons on a 
man's uniform. . . . 

The Officer found himself on a little hill with the 
command to dig himself in. . . . Already the 
enemy had the range of his position; and even as 
the men set frantically to work with their entrench- 
ing tools, came a shell. ... It exploded fair among 
them. ... It seemed unreal; horribly unreal. . . . 
Where but a moment before had been men, swear- 
ing, sweating, digging, was now only **, vast hole. 
There was blood, to be sure; there were pieces of 
flesh — an arm, a leg, a head torn from its quivering 
trunk. . . . And there were wounded, screaming, 
muttering. . . . 

The Officer grew sick. . . . He tried to see who 
it was that was gone. . . . 

But there was no time for that. They must dig 
and fight — dig and fight. . . . That was what war 
was, digging and fighting. . . . 

There came another shell. And more men were 
gone. . . . 

And now the enemy were charging. Little men, 
they looked, in dull, dusty uniforms. . . . 

Even as he watched, his own troops, on either 
side of the hill began to fall back. ... A retreat ! 
. . . His jaw set. . . . 



"for god and king!" 91 

His Second in Command saw, too. . . . Sweat 
running from his forefread, he looked up. . . . The 
Officer's eyes half closed. . . . 

"Dig," he said. And that was all. 

Another shell came. . . . More men were 
gone. ... A flying fragment killed the horse of an 
orderly, from headquarters, pitching him off on his 
head. . . . He came up to the Offcer, spitting dirt 
and blood. 

Cursing the enemy that had killed his horse, he 
screamed his orders to the Officer. They were to 
hold the position at all cost; to enfilade the ad- 
vancing enemy when they tried to pass, so that those 
on either side of the hill might effect a safe retreat. 

The orderly started off, cursing, stumbling over 
the corpses. He had gone seventy yards, perhaps 
eighty, when it happened. ... A sheet of flame. . . . 
The Orderly's field glasses fell at the Officer's feet. 
The Officer picked them up and stood looking at 
them, vacantly. . . . 

He felt a little stinging swish across his fore- 
head. And his eyes were filled with blood. . . . 

He drew his hand across them. . . . The enemy 
were nearer. . . . He looked for his Second in 
Command. . . . The Second in Command was 
holding his hand where his jaw had been; over it 
ran a cataract of blood. . . . 



92 SCARS AND STRIPES 

The Officer remembered his orders. So that was 
it! They were a sop — a sop to be thrown to the 
great grey snake to make him pause in his crawling 
long enough that others might escape. 

His jaw set a bit tighter. ... If there must be a 
sop, there must be. All men can't be heroes ; as all 
men can't live and love and be happy. . . . And if 
it must be he that is to die that others may live — 
war is war, and life is life, even as death is but 
death. . . . There came to him dimly in all the hell- 
hurled tumult that it didn't matter much, after all — 
that it wouldn't matter much if only it weren't for 
Her. . . . And if his going would save her from 
the Thing so horribly worse than death that conquer- 
ing men do to conquered women God ! 

They were few now, his men, pitifully few. . . . 
Even as he looked more were down. . . . His own 
orderly was among them ; hardly more than a boy 
he was, a boy who loved all men and whom all men 
loved. . . . They couldn't kill him ! It was unfair, 
horribly unfair! The boy whom children loved, to 
whose feet every stray dog came friendily. . . . 

The machine-guns had been smashed or silenced 
save one. . . . Two men were operating this, one 
firing, the other feeding. . . . 

And now the enemy were upon them. . . . Like 
grey waves, they foamed up the hillside, surging 



\ 



"for god and king!' 93 

along on either side of the base. . . . He emptied his 
automatic blindly a( the surging grey torrent. . . . 

He heard some one calling to him. He looked. 
One of the men at the gun was down; a bullet 
through his head, striking as fair between the eyes 
as you could place your finger. . . . 

The Officer threw down his empty gun. Drag- 
ging the fallen body to one side, he took his place, 
firing, firing, firing at the surging grey waves that 
came rolling on endlessly, remorselessly. . . . 

His finger pressing the trigger, he took a swift 
look about him. . . . All were down now. . . . All 
gone. , . . All dead or dying, all save only the man 
beside him and — himself. . . . 

His gun had ceased firing ; he pressed the trigger 
savagely. . . . But it wasn't the gun ; it was the man 
beside him. . . . He had slipped to the ground ; there 
was a red foam flecking his lips. . . . He thrust out 
his hand. . . . The Officer grasped it with his own, 
then slipped in a fresh belt of cartridges. . . . 

Then It came. It was as though some one had 
hit him on the chest with a stick — a fierce, quick, 
savage thrust. ... It didn't hurt much. . . . He felt 
dizzy and weak. . . . That was funny. He looked 
down at the breast of his uniform. There was a 
great, wet, red splotch. His breath bubbled in his 
throat. He slipped to the ground. . . . 



94 SCARS AND STEIPES 

The grey seas engulfed him. Countless grey 
forms were all about him. It was the End. . . . 

And so he died. But before the soul had left his 
body, came to blood-streaked lips six words. The 
first was the name of his wife. And the other four : 

"For God and King!" 

The king sat smoking. Through half-shut eyes 
he watched the woman before him. She was very 
beautiful, this woman; kings usually know what is 
beautiful of woman; kings usually have what is 
beautiful of woman; for, being kings, they have 
much money and much power; and money and 
power bring beautiful things. 

I could not describe this woman if I would; nor 
would I if I could. But you have seen beautiful 
women. This woman was probably more beautiful 
than any you ever saw. And the king looked at 
her through half -shut eyes. . . . 

They did not speak. There was no reason why 
they should. They both knew that her husband had 
been removed from the board of strategy, where he 
would have been of great value to his country, and 
sent to the front, where he could be of but little. 
And they both knew why he had been sent, and who 
had sent him. Therefore the Beautiful Woman re- 



"for god and king!" 95 

clined before the king; while the king watched her 
through half -shut eyes. 

And they both knew, too, the thought within their 
minds. So she said nothing. She was a very beau- 
tiful woman and she had chosen what she had 
chosen. And he? Well, was he not a king by di- 
vine right? 

And a king, you know, can do no wrong. 



CHAPTER FOUR 



"SOMEWHERE IN " 



CHAPTER FOUR 



"somewhere in — *—>" 



IT was springtime in France. 
Before the door of his cottage, sat Pierre Le- 
blanc. The soft, sweet scent of the awakening earth 
came to him; the humming of bees. Before him, 
the fair countryside, vari-coloured squares, lush 
green, dun, dull brown, stretched far away to meet 
the deep blue of the sky. From the foot of the 
gently sloping hillside, where the little stream sang 
ever softly to itself, came the lowing of fat kine. 

All this Pierre Leblanc felt, and saw, and heard. 
And he was content ; nay, happy. To himself and 
his good wife God had, indeed, been kind. He had 
given them another child, this time a boy. He had 
given them a wondrous crop. He had given them 
health and wealth. Eighty francs were still due 
him for goods shipped to the great markets of the 
city. And Gervase, the apothecary, owed him yet 
another forty. 

And so Pierre Leblanc, sitting by the doorway of 
his home, was content with alf the world. 

99 



/ 



100 SCARS AND STRIPES 

A little child, a girl of four, came to his side, 
thrusting a sun-browned little hand within his own. 
A pretty child she was, dark-haired, dark-eyed, 
cheeks flushed with play. She leaned against his 
knee, crossing her sturdy little legs as children stand. 
Pierre Leblanc looked down at her. His smile met 
her own. 

"Est tu fatigue, p'titef he asked softly. 

She sighed. 

"Un pen/' she replied. 

And she sighed again, happily. It is good to be a 
child and tired. 

A voice hailed him from the gate. It was Petit- 
jean, whose cottage lay next door; Petit jean, young 
and tall and good to look upon, in smock and huge, 
baggy trousers. 

"I have come from the village/' he said. 

"Yes ?" queried Pierre Leblanc, stroking the tan- 
gled hair of the child at his knee. 

"There is strange talk," said Petitjean, "there, in 
the village." 

"Talk?" asked Pierre Leblanc. "Talk of what?" 

Petitjean waited a moment. His gaze drifted 
slowly over the sun-filled fields. ... It was absurd, 
of course ; impossible. Pierre Leblanc would think 
him fon. . . . Nevertheless, he answered. 

"The talk," he said, at length, "is of war." 



"somewhere in " 101 

There fell a pause. The wife of Pierre Leblanc, 
young, comely, with the dark hair and eyes of the 
little girl, and the full bust of the nursing mother, 
came into the doorway. She carried the baby, their 
man-child, in her arms. 

"War!" she said. . . . Then, "War?" 

Petit jean nodded. 

"It is the Germans/' he said. 

Pierre Leblanc had looked first surprised ; then in- 
credulous; then amused. Now he lifted his head 
and laughed aloud. 

Petit jean watched him. 

"You laugh," he said, at length. 

Pierre Leblanc turned to him, still smiling. 

"And why not?" he queried. 

"War with Germany?" he continued. "Zutl It 
is absurd ! We are at peace. The whole world is 
at peace. Crops are good. There is money for all. 
Then why should there be war ?" 

Petit jean shook his head. 

"I do not know," he said. "But it is the talk." 

Pierre Leblanc eyed him with kindly scorn. 

"Pouf !" he said. "You are young, mon vieux. 
When you shall be as old as I, you will not permit 
to affect you the idle fancies of the scatter-brained." 

But Petit jean again shook his head. 
It is the talk," he reiterated. 



(c 



102 SCARS AND STRIPES 

Pierre Leblanc shifted, impatiently. 

"Then the talk," he asserted, "is absurd. We 
know that perhaps Germany wants more territory 
for her people, more seaports for her commerce. 
But to go to war for these things? Mais non! We 
are a civilised people. The Germans are a civilised 
people. We have been at peace these many years. 
And in those years, we have both learned much. 
Men fly no longer, like animals, at one another's 
throats. Differences nowadays are left to arbitra- 
tion. Have we not treaties? Have we not The 
Hague? Have we not honour, and decency, and 
mercy, and brotherly love? We are no longer 
beasts. Civilisation has taught us to be humane." 

He waved his hand. 

"Listen no more to idle talk. Go home and 
sleep in peace. War is gone from the world for- 
ever!" 

A fortnight later Petit jean again stood at the 
gate. It was sunset; the sky was of red and gold 
and the colours of opals. 

"The talk of war," said Petitjean, "goes on." 

Pierre Leblanc this time did not laugh. He did 
not believe. But he did not laugh. 

"Yes," he said, "the talk goes on. But what of 
that? Talk does not make facts. There can be no 



< c 



SOMEWHERE IN ' 103 



war. Weapons are too terrible nowadays. No 
man, no nation, could stand against them. And the 
good God would not permit a thing so terrible to 
come upon His earth. Fear not. The talk will 
cease. . . ." 

But the talk did not cease. 

And again, at the cottage gate, Petit jean stopped, 
on his way home. 

"The talk of war is more/' he said. 

Pierre Leblanc nodded. 

"I have heard/' he replied. "The talk is of 
nothing else/' 

"And you now believe ?" queried Petit jean. 

Leblanc shook his head. 

"I do not know," he answered. "I am confused. 
A month ago I would not have believed. But where 

there is so much talk And in the papers. . . . 

The Germans are a strange people ; that is, the Prus- 
sians. We do not understand them; nor do they 
understand us. And it may be that they think " 



His wife, baby in arms, came into the doorway. 

Petit jean spoke slowly, as one dreading to voice 
his thought. 

"You think," he queried, "that if war comes, it 
will come here — to us?" 

Pierre Leblanc's expression changed. It changed 



104 SCARS AND STRIPES 

from seriousness to amusement. And once again 
he laughed. He looked up at his wife, still laugh- 
ing. But she did not laugh. Women are different 
from men. Leblanc turned back to Petitjean. 

"Come here?" he cried. "War come here?" He 
chuckled. "It is a very werewolf of a war of which 
you dream! How," he asked, "could war come 
here? Have we not a great and gallant army? 
Have we not forts and guns? Have we not treat- 
ies that protect us from invasion ? How, then, can 
war come to us?" 

Petitjean thought. 

"Perhaps," he suggested at length, "through Bel- 
gium." 

Again Pierre Leblanc laughed in kindly scorn. 

"That," he asserted, "is precisely what the Ger- 
mans have agreed that they would not do. And 
even should they try, the Belgians are no fools; 
neither are they cowards. They have an army 
amply big for defence. And their forts are mag- 
nifiqiie! Not all the men in Germany could carry 
them!" 

He shrugged his shoulders. 

"Should the Germans try to violate Belgium," he 
asserted, "the war would be over before it had be- 
gun. Men cannot stand against the weapons of to- 
day. Cannon which kill at twenty-five kilometres! 



i i 



SOMEWHERE IN ' 105 



Aeroplanes which drop bombs of fire! Machine- 
guns which mow men down as you cut grain with 
a sickle ! Should war come to-day, one battle would 
be all. Thousands and tens of thousand of soldiers 
killed. The world sick with horror. . . . And then 
a settlement. . . . We are generations from slaugh- 
ter. We could not stand it. 

"Fear not," he said. "War may come. But we 
and those we love are safe." 

So thought Pierre Leblanc. So thought count- 
less thousands that were as he. But he, and they, 
were wrong. And while God's head was turned 
away, the devil let loose upon the earth a Monster 
that no man dreamed could be! 



Pierre Leblanc stood at the door of his cottage. 
His little girl stood beside him, her little hand in his. 
Beside him stood his wife, their man-child at her 
breast. Side by side they stood, watching the sol- 
diers as they marched by. 

Pierre Leblanc had seen many pictures of soldiers. 
He had listened to the gallant tales of the ancients — - 
the veterans of other wars. Of troops going to 
war there had been always in his mind a clear and 
vivid picture: Flags flying; drums rolling; music; 
gallant officers, with flashing swords and shining 
helmets on great steeds that curvetted and caracoled ; 



106 SCARS AND STRIPES 

men that marched brilliantly in brilliant uniforms. 
That had been the picture in his mind. How vastly 
different the picture that his eyes now saw ! 

A crawling, grey dust-snake was writhing its sul- 
len way across the fair land. Its head had long since 
passed the first house of their village. Its tail was 
somewhere over the shimmering blue hills beyond 
the next. In the distance, it was that, nothing more 
— just a crawling, grey snake. 

But nearer it broke up into its component entities. 
Men that walked wearily, carrying heavy guns and 
heavier packs, while the sweat cut tiny rivulets 
in their dust-plastered faces; dust-covered guns 
drawn by dust-covered horses ridden by dust-cov- 
ered riders; supply wagons, dust-covered like all 
else . . . more men . . . more wagons . . . more guns 
. . : men, and guns, and wagons; wagons, and 
guns, and men, emerging vaguely from the great 
grey snake, only to merge back again into its writh- 
ing coils. 

And there stood watching, in the summer sun, 
Pierre Leblanc and his wife, their daughter, and the 
man-child that le bon Dieu had been so good as to 
send them ; watched while the bees hummed and a 
bird, hidden in the green leaves above them, sang, 
and sang, and sang. . . . 

Pierre Leblanc heard his name called. He looked, 



"somewhere in " 107 

trying to pierce the dust with his gaze. He heard 
his name again. An arm waved. A figure, dust- 
grey, like all the rest, stood out from among the 
countless others. 

It was Petitjean; Petitjean, tall, young, so good 
to look upon. Petitjean who, when came the call of 
France to her sons, laid down his tools and quietly 
went forth to offer his life for hers. He was no 
man of phrases. He had said only, "I am going to 
the war." And he had gone. And now he waved 
to Pierre Leblanc, who was older, and whom his 
country did not yet need, waved from the grey snake 
of men, sons of France, like him, going to war so 
quietly, their souls too full for words, their hearts 
too great for bombast. 

And now Petitjean was gone. The dust again 
swallowed him, even as it had spewed him forth. . . . 
And on the grey snake writhed — men, and guns, and 
wagons ; wagons, and guns, and men. 

And Pierre Leblanc and his wife stood watching, 
in the summer sun, while the bees hummed and 
above them, hidden amid the green of the leaves, a 
bird sang, and sang, and sang. 

Suddenly it came upon them. So suddenly that 
it was hard, very hard, to credit. Man is but man 



108 SCARS AND STRIPES 

And that which through many years he has learned 
to believe lies close against his skull. 

Belgium had been invaded. 

But how could that be ? Her fortresses were im- 
pregnable. Of steel and cement, and the brains of 
the best engineers of the world ! And was there not 
the treaty — the treaty which Germany had signed 
against this very thing? 

That treaty only a scrap of paper? It could not 
be possible. Treaties were made, like promises, of 
the honour and honesty of men and nations. And if 
honour and honesty were gone from the world, 
what would be left? Any man could repudiate his 
word or his debts. There could be no business, no 
society, no religion, no morals, no ethics. The rami- 
fications were inconceivable. It split civilisation 
wide open at its base ! No ! No ! It could not be ! 

Wild rumours came to the village. Pierre Le- 
blanc, puzzled, amazed, helpless, listened. It was 
too much for any man to grasp. He shook his 
head, weakly. He listened while others talked, in 
the little shop that Gervase, the apothecary, had 
kept these many years. While others talked, he lis- 
tened. Gervase listened, too. From time to time 
Gervase smiled a little, quietly, when he thought no 
one was looking. Pierre Leblanc saw. This, too, 
he thought was strange. Why should Gervase 



(. i 



SOMEWHERE IN " 109 



smile? — Gervase, whose friend he had been these 
many years. 

While others talked, volubly, excitedly, he left, to 
go home to his cottage, to his little daughter, to his 
wife and their man-child. At home there were only 
bees, the singing of the brook, the lowing of fat 
kine, and the bird that sang hidden in the leaves. 
There he could sit quietly and think, that he might 
try to gain even a tiny glint of the great change that 
had come over all the world — a change that left him 
helpless, weak, dreadful. 

He was crossing the little bridge, just above the 
mill, when he heard a rumble, as of distant thunder. 
He stopped, listening. He looked up at the sky. 
It was a bowl of blue, no cloud upon its surface. 
Pierre Leblanc scratched his head. Thunder, with 
no cloud in sight; thunder in the azure brilliance of 
a summer's day ? The world was mad indeed ! 

Again the rumble. Again Pierre Leblanc 
scratched his head, in deep perplexity. Again he 
looked in the direction whence came the incongru- 
ous sound. 

Hello ! What was that ? Some one was coming, 
there over the hill beyond the village — a man on a 
bicycle, a tiny dot against the bald whiteness of the 
road. He travelled fast. Another raised the brow 
of the hill. Another, and another ; then a group. 



110 SCARS AND STRIPES 

Again Pierre Leblanc scratched his head. Who 
could they be, these men? Not tourists. There 
were no tourists in France now. Couriers, perhaps, 
from the front ! That was it ! Couriers from the 
front, with news of victory! A great victory, a 
glorious victory, for France! 

He turned. He would go back to the village, to 
welcome them! But even as he turned, he saw 
coming over the distant hill-brow other men — men 
on horses, this time ! On horses that galloped fran- 
tically. . . . He stopped. . . . That was puzzling. 
Surely, one man, or two, could bear news of vic- 
tory. Why, then, all these ? . . . And then it came 
to him, why couriers at all ? Was there not the tele- 
graph, the telephone, even the wireless? It struck 
him sickeningly that couriers belonged to other days 
— distant days — the days of the pictures that he had 
seen and imagined — the days of Napoleon — not to 
times like these. 

He tried to think, but his brain refused to give; 
his imagination to conceive. It did not matter. 
They would be here soon, these hurrying figures of 
which now there were so many. 

An aeroplane, like some great bird, came out of 
the nothingness of the sky, high above him, to sail 
swiftly across the blue toward Paris. 

The men on the cycles were lost now, hidden by 



"somewhere in " 111 

the houses of the village. But ever the road over the 
hill gave birth to more — horses, now, and wagons, 
and men on foot. And, during all, the dull rumble 
of the thunder that he could not understand — the 
thunder that came of a sunlit summer day. 

Suddenly, from the village, came the wheel- 
men. . . . Soldiers they were; their uniforms dirty 
and torn. Bending over low handlebars, they ped- 
alled fiercely. 

Nearer and nearer they came . . . nearer — near- 
er Pierre Leblanc watched them come. He 

walked almost to the middle of the road, waiting to 
hail them. 

On they came. He could see their faces — drawn 
faces, and dirty, with bloodshot eyes and lips pulled 
back from teeth in agony of effort. 

As he spoke, they flew past. They did not answer. 
It was as though they did not see him. There was 
something in their eyes that Pierre Leblanc had 
never seen. 

Startled, almost stunned, he watched them wheel 
away over the sunlit road. Then something within 
him broke; something nameless; something awful! 
Turning, he ran with all the strength that was in him 
to his cottage, to his little girl, to his good wife and 
the man-child that God had given them. . . . 



112 SCARS AND STRIPES 

From the windows of their cottage they watched. 

Pierre Leblanc watched with eyes dull and nar- 
rowed, like one whose vision asks his brain to be- 
lieve too much. ... It is often so ; when one must 
suddenly face that which one has always believed 
never could be. The good wife's eyes were round 
in horror. She knew. Women are different from 
men. The little girl whimpered, frightenedly. Hell 
had broken upon them ; but she was only just from 
heaven. So she could not understand. The man- 
child nursed his mother's breast. God's warm 
breath was still upon his little body. So what knew 
he of fear? 

The fair white road before the cottage was a ruck 
of frightened, cursing men; of plunging, screaming 
horses; of ploughing motors, like Juggernauts, tear- 
ing their shrieking way through the tossed and toss- 
ing masses of men and animals. . . . Cries and mut- 
terings, the crashing of metal against metal. . . . 
Discarded guns and equipment to catch the fright- 
ened feet of those who fled. ... A hopeless, heav- 
ing, pitiful mass of God's creatures turning from 
a horror so great as to kill reason and slaughter san- 
ity — a mass that began where human vision began 
and ended where human vision ended. . . . 

And Pierre Leblanc watched, dull eyes unbeliev- 



i i 



SOMEWHERE IN " 113 



ing, like a well man thrust suddenly into the middle 
of hell. . . . And his good wife, who was woman, 
watched with the horror that she knew. . . . Their 
daughter whimpered. . . . The man-child, that was 
fresh from God, nursed its mother's breast. 

The sun lay in the west. 

The ruck was thinning now. The able-bodied 
had gone. Only the wounded were left, and the 
weak, hobbling, helping one another, fleeing blindly 
from the million horrors behind them. A man, his 
leg hanging, foot dangling sickeningly, using two 
rifles for crutches. . . . Another, twisting a bloody 
rag around a bloody, empty sleeve . . . others . . . 
more, and more, and more. . . . 

And Pierre Leblanc at length believed. 

Opening the cottage door, he stepped forth into 
the dying day. His little girl followed, clinging 
frightenedly to his smock. The good wife laid the 
baby in his crib. She took her place at the side of 
her man. 

They went to the one with the dangling leg. He 
cursed them, strangely, and hobbled on. 

They found another unconscious. Him they half- 
carried, half-dragged, into the cottage. They gave 
him water. With deft fingers, the good wife bound 



N » 



114 SCARS AND STRIPES 

up his wound. He was too near death to speak his 
gratitude. He could but look it. 

And then they went forth into the blood-smeared 
roadway to look for more. . . . They found them. 
They found them in plenty. Some they took into 
their cottage and cared for. Others they left, cov- 
ering their faces. ... 

It did not occur to them to flee. They were God's 
creatures, caring for others of His creatures. That 
was all. And in all the world no soldier ever makes 
war except on soldiers. Those who were not sol- 
diers were ever safe in the sanctuary of their help- 
lessness. Unarmed men, women, and little children, 
these War spared. Such has been the law of civi- 
lised warfare these half thousand of years. These 
things Pierre Leblanc and his good wife knew. 
Hence, fearless for themselves, they stayed to do 
their pitiful little to aid the tortured and the suffer- 
ing. 

Busy with their work, they did not look up until 
there came to their ears a sharp, biting rattle ... a 
machine-gun! . . . Across the dun meadow, where 
long shadows lay, men were running; men with 
childish red trousers and little red caps that made 
them fair marks against anything but a field of 
blood. . . . Three fell, as they ran, almost to- 



i 6 



SOMEWHERE IN ' 115 



gether . . . another . . . two more. . . . The rest 
fell face down beside the little brook that sang ever 
to itself, there at the foot of the hill . . . There 
were willows there. They hid among the roots, 
their rifles spitting flame. 

He could scarcely see the men that pursued. 
Their uniforms blended strangely with the ground. 
And ever came the ripping fire of the machine-gun. 

And Pierre Leblanc, now very wise of the world, 
and of the shameless, nameless things that mankind 
can do to man, knew that these men with the red 
trousers and caps were what was left of a detach- 
ment of the rear-guard — the few that in all retreats 
must die that the many may live. 

The tat-tat-tat of the machine-gun kept on. He 
could see the figures by the willows start, half erect, 
only to drop again. A gun fell from the hands that 
held it; the body rolled half upon its side. A man 
lay with head raised. The head fell forward into 
the little stream, the water above the ears. . . . 
That was all. 

Little figures so hard to see against the fallow 
field rose. They ran forward, carrying with them 
a gun mounted qn a tripod. Three fell. The rest 
threw themselves flat. The ripping of the machine- 
gun came louder, its flashes plainly visible. 



116 SCARS AND STRIPES 

Suddenly the men by the willows leaped to their 
feet. Four fell, face down. The rest ran. They 
ran toward the cottage of Pierre Leblanc. 

Perhaps twenty started. Five reached the door, 
to which Pierre Leblanc had already retreated. And 
the first of these was Petitjean; Petitjean, so young, 
so strong; Petitjean that had been so good to look 
upon. Had been, because that was no more. Part 
of his nose was gone, torn from his face by a bullet. 
A bloody rag bound his head, from lips to eyes. 
Blood flowed over his mouth as he tried to speak. 
Yet he was neither excited nor afraid. 

And Pierre Leblanc took them into his cottage, 
and closed the door. 

They would be prisoners, of course. Petitjean a 
prisoner! Petitjean, his neighbour, to be taken 
away, somewhere in Germany, to be held until the 
war should end, his farm to run to weeds, his stock 
confiscated by the enemy! 

Petitjean mumbled thickly his words. 

"Dieu!" he cried thickly. "To send men armed 
only with guns against giant artillery ! It was that ! 
Not fear. Not cowardice. France knows neither ! 
But to be slaughtered like sheep by the butcher with 
no way to defend oneself ! They are not to blame, 
the men that fled. Nor is France to blame ! It was 
that in her own innocence and loving kindness she 



"somewhere in " 117 

did not dream of war. Hence she lay all unpre- 
pared, and her sons must die! To be unprepared 
for war, has ever meant, will ever mean, but one 
thing. And that one thing is death! He who is 
prepared kills. He who is unprepared is killed. 
Cest tout!" 

The men with the dull grey uniforms were at the 
door now. Defence was at an end. With car- 
tridges gone, the five men within the cottage knew 
that they had done all that lay in their power to 
do. . . . And there were the many wounded that 
Pierre Leblanc and his good wife had taken inside 
their home. Pierre Leblanc looked at them. They 
looked at him, and at each other. 

Petitjean it was who spoke. 

"Cest fini" he said quietly. "It is the end." The 
other four nodded. 

And so Pierre Leblanc opened the door. 

One bullet would have been enough. It entered 
his smock fair over the heart. . . . They pierce 
well, these modern bullets, and that which killed 
Pierre Leblanc struck the head from the plaster 
Christ above the mantel. There were four more 
bullets. But since Pierre Leblanc lay dead, what 
matters where they struck? 

The good wife, baby at breast, started a moment, 



118 SCARS AND STRIPES 

dully. She said no word. She made no sound. She 
reeled a little. Then, suddenly, swiftly, surely, she 
flung herself full upon the bayonets before her. 
And on one of these, she gasped out her life. And 
from this shining steel, dulled of her blood, whit- 
ened of her mother milk, God took her. . . . He 
took her man-child with her. 

The little girl, dark-haired, dark-eyed, flew 
frightenedly to Petitjean; Petitjean, the big, the 
strong; Petitjean that told her stories of the 
fairies. . . . One bullet served them both. 

More shots. Perhaps a dozen. For there were 
still the wounded, you know. 

There came the sound of the striking of a match. 
A little flame crept up the white curtains that the 
good wife had fashioned as she sang, there in the 
long, happy days that fell after God had whispered 
of the child that He was to send to her — to her and 
Pierre Leblanc. 

And Gervase, who kept the little apothecary, and 
who had been the friend of Pierre Leblanc these 
many years, looked up at the officer beside him. 

"Cest bien!" he murmured softly. He saw the 
officer looking at him; quickly he corrected himself. 
What he said was, "Das 1st gut." But then, he had 
been long in France. One could not blame him that 
he forgot. 



C i 



SOMEWHERE IN " 119 



The wife of Petitjean, hiding with other dry- 
eyed women and helpless children, whimpering of 
hunger, from the distant copse in which she lay saw 
the flames of the cottage of Pierre Leblanc, a finger 
of fire pointing toward the sky. And, whispering 
to God, she crossed herself. For she thought it was 
her own. 

II 

It was springtime in America. 

Before the door of his cottage, sat Peter White. 
The soft scent of the awakening earth came to him; 
the humming of bees. Before him, the fair coun- 
tryside, vari-coloured squares, lush-green, dun, dull 
brown, stretched far away to meet the deep blue of 
the sky. 

A little child, a girl of four, came to his side, 
thrusting a sun-browned hand within his own. . . . 
Peter White looked down at her. His smile met her 
own. 

A voice hailed him from the gate. It was Little- 
John, whose cottage lay next door; Little John, 
young and tall and good to look upon, in flannel 
shirt and corduroys. 

"I have come from the village/' he said. 

"Yes?" queried Peter White, stroking the tan- 
gled hair of the child at his knee. 



120 SCARS AND STRIPES 






There's queer talk going on," said Littlejohn, 
there in the village." 
"Talk?" asked Peter White. "Talk of what?" 
"The talk," Littlejohn said, "is of war." 
Peter White looked first surprised ; then incredu- 
lous; then amused. Now he lifted his head and 
laughed aloud. 

"War !" he exclaimed. "Bah ! We're in no dan- 
ger of war! And even if war should come, how 
could it hurt us, here in America? Ridiculous! 

Why, we " 

So spoke Peter White. For was not he wise; 
wise even as you and I; wise even as had been 
Pierre Leblanc? 



CHAPTER FIVE 



MARY AND MARIE 



CHAPTER FIVE 

MARY AND MARIE 

THIS is not much of a story. It doesn't start 
anywhere in particular; nor does it end any- 
where in particular. It has no love interest ; it will 
not amuse, and it has an unhappy ending. So, if 
you are like most of us here in America (which 
means that you don't believe in doing anything 
you don't want to do) perhaps you had better not 

read it. However 

The name of the Virgin was Mary; and the 
French for Mary is Marie. Time, place and asso- 
ciation change all things and in all ways. The dif- 
ference between What Might Have Been and What 
Is is ofttimes only so much as the gentle sunlight 
of a whim, or the darkling shadow of a mood. 
Moreover, the sunlight and the shadow may not be 
even of our own, but reflected upon ourselves from 
that which falls upon the lives of others. Whereby 
it were well to remember that it is not for us too 
much to praise Marie, too much to blame Mary. For 
life is as deep as it is devious, and as devious as it 

is deep. For had it been Mary that had been Marie, 

123 



124 SCARS AND STRIPES 

and Marie that had been Mary, who of us shall 
say where would rise the praise, where fall the 
blame? For, as you shall see 

Marie lived in Belgium — in northern Belgium 
amid the gentle hills which, lace-coiffed in shining 
filaments of river and of brook, sat ever like good 
housewives amid the ordered products of their 
kindly lives — sat ever thus until, one day of summer, 
soft and still and smiling, came hordes of strange, 
unhuman men to rouse them to awful, biting terror, 
to sear their hearts with tears, and drown their 
souls in blood. 

There lived Marie. 

Mary lived in America — in the United States, a 
country broad and raw and young, a country that, 
even as Belgium went to war to save her gentle soul 
from dishonour, and stayed at war to save her clean, 
frail body from red and ravishing hands, sat idly 
by, selfish, self-satisfied, coddling her full young 
figure of the liberties and riches left her by the 
toil and moil and struggle of generations of 
strong, self-sacrificing forebears — squandering vac- 
uously in self-pander all the riches of honour and 
courage and dignity that they had left her. Fatly 
and fatuously she stifled all in her that was fine, all 
that was noble, under the plea of the selfishly in- 
dolent that that which didn't happen to her was none 



MARY AND MARIE 125 

of her business. ... So might Christ have thought. 
Only He didn't. . . . 

And there lived Mary. 

So that now, if you have come with me thus far, 
we may go further. 

Marie lived in a tiny auberge kept by her people. 
It was called the Hotel des Couronnes. But it 
wasn't like that a bit. In France, little things run to 
great names — even as in America great names run 
to little things. Perhaps it is Nature's plan of bal- 
ance. Who knows? 

The Hotel des Couronnes means the hotel of the 
funeral wreaths. And in the name lay perhaps, 
perhaps not, the spirit of prophecy. 

It was not a large hotel; on the contrary, it was 
a very small hotel. It had four guest-rooms with 
very high and very old and very soft beds. It had 
a tiny cafe with marble-topped tables. It had great 
stables and a courtyard floored of cobbles, wherein 
all day long plump pigeons fluttered and strutted, 
strutted and fluttered. And when one walked across 
this courtyard, one's sabots made upon the cobbles 
a great and mighty sound. . . . Such was the God- 
given peace that lay like His cupped hands about 
the Hotel des Couronnes. . . . 

For the rest, it was a quaint old place, long and 
low and rambling. To its red-tiled roofs and grey 



126 SCABS AND STRIPES 

walls fashioned by hands long since gone back to 
the earth-mother that gave them of her life and in 
the end gathered them once again unto her breast, 
clung, lizzard-flke, the sprays of dull-green ivy. 

One grey wall — the one caressed by the warm 
rays of the setting sun — was quite close to a river. 

It was a little river, this of which I tell you. A 
tiny river, but friendly and sociable and unbelievably 
talkative! Where it came from, nobody seemed 
to know. Those asked would shrug their shoulders 
uninterestedly, and say, "Oh, qa vien du loin" which 
means somewhere a long way off. And, apparently, 
it went to the same place — at any rate such was 
the similar answer to similar queries. . . . 

As near as one could see, standing on the hill 
where wound the white road with its tall sentinels 
of green poplars, the river came from up the valley 
just beyond the fertile fields of the farm of Papa 
Michard. Then, after hiding from one playfully 
for a space, it came in sight again just above the 
tiny bridge where crossed the motors on their way 
to the capital. Thence, after leaping lightly from 
ripple to ripple, it would come to a singing halt in 
the little pool near the old grey wall. And there, 
resting gently beneath the soft shadows of the wil- 
lows, it would linger to chat with one, while the 
willows nodded softly as they listened. 



MARY AND MARIE 127 

And there, while the river lay resting in its little 
pool, Marie would come to chat with it, while the 
friendly willows gathered all about her to listen. 
They whispered sometimes, too; but willows have 
not much to say, since they spend all their lives in 
one place. But rivers, now, they travel vastly ! . . . 
It must be wonderful to be a river and to see of 
all the world so much! 

But since one may not be a river, then the next 
best thing is to have one for a friend. Thus it 
was with Marie. They knew each other well, the 
river and Marie ; knew and loved. In all its moods 
she knew it: in the springtime, when it hurried 
past on its never-ending journey, too busy save for 
a passing friendly word. . . . And in the winter 
when the ice lay over it like a prison window ; though 
even then one could peer through and see it smiling 
at one from beneath. . . . 

But in the soft spring and the gentle summer she 
would lie by its side, listening ( for, you must know, 
it was the river that did most of the talking ; Marie 
liked best to listen) flat upon the ground, young 
limbs full sprawled, while it told her of its travels 
— of the broad sea of which Marie knew only in 
pictures — of huge ships of steel that carried in their 
black wombs more men than lay in all the country- 
side — of great cities where people dwelt like bees 



128 SCARS AND STRIPES 

in a hive — where sought the skies chimneys more 
numerous than the stalks of corn before the har- 
vest. . . . 

It told her of the men that built the little auberge 
— the red roofs and the grey, stained walls — the 
men long since gone to their fathers. It told her of 
those before them — men in silk and cloth-of-gold, 
with hooded hawks upon their wrists. . . . Even 
of the men before these it told her — great men in 
shining armour that rode huge, thundering charg- 
ers covered with steel and silk and the white foam 
of their champing jaws. . . . You see, it was a very 
old river, this river that Marie knew, very old and 
very wise, as old as it was gentle, as kind as it was 
wise. . • . 

And by its side Marie, full lips parted, dark eyes 
wide in wonder, would lie and listen until, of a sud- 
den, soft shadows came stalking past upon the 
grey, stained wall — came the sound of kine splash- 
ing in the lush grass below, and the voice of her 
mother calling her to the white-floored kitchen with 
its pots and pans of flashing copper. . . . Marie 
would sigh softly, and go, sorry and yet infinitely 
glad; sorry that she must leave, even for a time, 
the friendly old river that knew so much, and glad 
because she knew it at all. . . . Ma foil It is good 
to know a river like that ! Such a travelled river ! 



MARY AND MARIE 129 

Such a very old river ! A river that could tell you 
of a thousand kilometres and half a thousand years ! 
Such then was Marie. . . . You know her now a 
little, don't you ? Well, then, let us leave her for a 
— Pardon? . . . May she not go back to the little 
pool and listen to the river while we are away ? . . . 
Why, surely! . . . What? . . . Yes. I see. . . . 
Oh, but she is only a little girl. . . . Nineteen. But 
not as girls you know are nineteen. She has lived 
with the birds, the flowers, the trees, and, yes, to be 
sure, the river. She has lived with them and loved 
them. Sunshine has been father to her, Nature her 
mother. Years neither bless nor curse her. Hence 
I repeat, she is but a little girl. So what of it if, 
as she lies sprawled there by the little river, her 
skirt does happen to be a few inches above her shoe- 
top? I shan't tell her. Nor shall I permit you. It 
would only make her ashamed. And it is not well 
to make ashamed those to whom shame is not due. 
Remember that. And let us go. 

As I have told you, Mary lived in America. She 
lived in a large city. It was not a pretty city. It 
was just large. Consequently America was very 
proud of it, and boasted extensively of the height of 
its buildings and the number of miles of its subways 
and how many millionaires it had. 



130 SCARS AND STRIPES 

In this large city Mary lived in a large house. 
There were many servants in Mary's house; I can't 
tell you how many because, in Mary's house, nobody 
went into the kitchen except the servants. Mary's 
mother used to have her breakfast in bed in her 
twin room, and Mary's father always left for the 
office before she was up — left wearing a gardenia 
and a worried look. He w r as junior partner in a 
brokerage concern and had almost as many enemies 
as Germany. But he had as many friends as Ger- 
many, and of much the same kind. For he was 
highly efficient; and when it came to business you 
had to get up mighty early to put anything over 
on him, you bet ! 

Mary didn't care much for Nature. She was will- 
ing to look at it from a limousine or a yacht, if 
she didn't have to look too long. And then she was 
even more willing to pass it up for something in- 
teresting. She preferred, with other Marys, to stay 
up late at night dancing, eating and flirting with 
well-groomed, slender and wealthy young men the 
insides of whose heads Nature profoundly abhorred. 
But they were perfectly corking dancers. Which, 
after all, seems to be the main thing nowadays. 

At the mature age of five Mary became cognisant 
of true facts in the case of Santa Claus, and was 
surprised that she had been fooled so long. At 



MARY AND MARIE 131 

seven she gave up dolls as things being all right for 

children, perhaps, but At twelve she was 

strolling with an academic interest through the pri- 
mary mysteries of sex; and at fourteen she knew 
the meaning of the word mistress as governed by 
modern usage, and was tolerably familiar with the 
duties and social status of the physical exemplifica- 
tions thereof. 

For the rest, she motored a bit and she yachted 
a bit, and she played bridge fairly well, though 
she could never remember what had been bid, and 
she went to the opera in clothes that would have 
been barred if worn on the stage, and she went to 
the theatre always making it a point to get in during 
the middle of the second act. She had read a few 
books that she shouldn't and almost none that she 
should, and she thought that Schopenhauer kept a 
road-house on Long Island. And she knew a lot 
of perfectly charming people. I forgot to mention 
that she had been to boarding-school and to a 
fashionable finishing-school where she learned a lot 
of things that didn't do her any harm, and a lot 
more that did. I also forgot to say that one night 
when she was forced to discharge a frightfully 
neglectful maid, she ran the ribbons in her lingerie 
herself and thought she had done a big day's work. 
I further forgot to tell you that she is now just 



132 SCARS AND STRIPES 

nineteen and, as ere this you undoubtedly must 
have observed, very, very beautiful. . . . 

And now you know Mary; at least, I hope you 
do. . . . So let us leave her and — Pardon? . . ... 
That dance at the Splendide ? Why, surely she may 
go. Why not? All the other Marys are going, 
aren't they ? She never goes to bed till two or three 
or four, anyway. . . . What? . . . Why, yes, cer- 
tainly. ... I see. . . . It's really very beautifully 
shaped, isn't it? . . . Tell her! . . . Um! ... I 
beg your pardon for smiling, but really — don't you 
suppose she knows it just as well as you do ? . . . 
Yes, of course I know that she ought to be ashamed. 
But what are you going to do with people who are 
so frightfully poor that they have nothing but 
money? 

It all came very suddenly. One day God smiled 
down through His sunshine upon the gentle hills. 
The next and His face was turned away, His ear 
grown deaf. . . . But how the devil chuckled ! 

Who till then had realised all the reeking horrors 
that mankind can do to man ? Not you, nor I. And 
not the people of the gentle hills. . . . But they 
learned. God! How they learned! 

Across the bridge over the little river they came, 
strange men in loose, dust-coloured uniforms and 



MARY AND MARIE 133 

queer helmets. . . . Before the auberge stood the 
old grey horse of Papa Michard, gentle of kind- 
ness to whose old grey flanks the touch of whip 
was yet unknown. As the soldiers passed he 
turned his head a little. A little it was; but it was 
enough. Of so small a thing as this may men be 
killed and women ravished. 

For as the horse turned his head, it struck one 
of these invading men. He turned. Muttering a 
guttural oath, he kicked the horse savagely in the 
belly. Papa Michard raised his hand in protest. 
... A bright point of steel showed through the 
back of his coat, just between the shoulders. There 
was blood upon it. . . . Marie, standing just behind,, 
saw. But she did not understand at first. Even 
when Papa Michard fell sideways to the ground 
she did not understand. For she had lived her 
nineteen years among gentle people, and she had 
been taught to believe that God would protect the 
good. And kindly old Papa Michard was loved 
through all the countryside. . . . 

Papa Michard's son came through the door of the 
auberge. He saw. He understood. He leaped for- 
ward. There was a sound as of some one snapping 
a whip. He fell across the body of his father. . . . 

And so it was that the commanding officer de- 
cided that the town should be taught a lesson. I 



134 SCARS AND STRIPES 

shall not tell you what this lesson was. But it is a 
lesson that the town learned, and well; a lesson 
that it will never forget as long as its people and 
their children and their children's children shall 
live within their land. ... It was a lesson that it 
were better to learn than to teach; that is, if you 
believe in Christ. . . . 

A part of this lesson Marie saw. Then some- 
thing within her broke. She turned and fled. 

Through the kitchen she passed, through the gar- 
den, blindly, eyes staring wide, soul seared to the 
core. She knew not where she fled ; it was to get 
away from the ghastly Horror that had sunk its 
talons in her brain. But something guided her. 
It took her to the little pool by the stained grey 
wall. And there she flung herself upon the bank, 
hidden by the willows that had not seen, as had she, 
the tumbled bodies of murdered men through the 
windows of whose dead eyes gazed nothing; peace- 
ful homes ablaze around the corpses of their own- 
ers; men and women and children mangled and 
tortured and slaughtered — the whole hell-pot of sav- 
agery, of cruelty and of lust. . . . 

Gripped of horror, gone of reason, so she lay for 
a time, wide of eye, lips parted, her face the colour 
of the whitewashed wall of the stable of Papa 
Michard through the roof of which long, licking 



MARY AND MARIE 135 

_______ _________________ _— — — — ____________ ____________ _____ _ ___________ _____ _____ _ 

tongues of flame were now beginning to eat their 
way. She heard the screams of women, the groans 
of men, the frightened whimpering of children. 
. . . The little river called to her. But she did not 
hear. Only she lay there while her brain burned 
and her soul cried out to God. 

As Mary's maid was slipping on Mary's sheer 
silk stocking, the door opened and her father en- 
tered. Mary took her eyes from the surface of a 
gold-chased mirror long enough to favour him with 
a look. He appeared exhilarated. 

From his inside pocket he took an envelope. 
This he threw carelessly on the table. 

"For me?" asked Mary. 

He nodded. 

"What is it?" she queried. 

"A war bride," he answered. He smiled, with 
infinite satisfaction. 

"I made a little killing to-day," he went on. 
"That," and he indicated the envelope on the table, 
"is your bit. I thought maybe you might like to 
give a party or something on your birthday. How 
about it?" 

Mary conceded that it was an excellent sugges- 
tion. She thanked him. And inasmuch as the en- 



136 SCARS AND STRIPES 

velope held stocks equivalent in value to five thou- 
sand dollars, she thanked him again. 

"But what did you say it was?" she queried. "A 
war what?" 

"War bride," he explained. "One of the stocks 
that those darned fools over in Europe are boosting 
by killing one another. This is United Cartridge, 
preferred. I've got a line on another that's going 
to be a peach. And if only the war keeps on a few 
months longer, we'll have that place at Newport 
that your mother's had her eye on so long." 

The whirling horror that tore her soul grew less. 
Reason, unseated by the drenching terror of blood 
and torture, crept weakly, pitifully to her brain. 
Marie opened drawn, fear-bitten eyes. Naked walls, 
red, glowing. . . . Corpses. . . . 

Vague thoughts, aching, awful, came to her but 
to lose themselves ere they could be grasped. It was 
like trying to find bodies in a sea of blood. 

Her father. . . . She remembered. . . . Him 
they had killed. . . . 

Again the sea of blood. 

Her mother. . . . Again she remembered. . . . 
That scream. ... It was her mother's voice. . . . 

And once again her reason, gripping with agon- 



MARY AND MARIE 137 

ised fingers of effort, slid back into the blood-red 
sea of vagueness. 

And so for a thousand thousand years she lay 
while all the ghouls of hell pounded at her brain 
and tore her soul. The river called softly, the old 
river, the friendly river. . . . But for all the noise, she 
could not hear. . . . The willows whispered, too. . . . 
But the voices of willows are so very soft, so very 
gentle. And perhaps they, too, were soul-stricken, 
for willows do not travel, and see so little. . . . 

Came Reason again, thrusting its battered head 
above the blood sea. ... It spoke to her. . . . 
Again, vaguely, she heard. . . . 

It was trying to tell her something. She clenched 
her hands; she shook the pounding ghouls from 
brain and soul. . . . She tried to listen. . . . 

There were other villages, Reason was saying, 
other villages like her own. There were other vil- 
lages, gentle villages, lying beneath God's cupped 
hands, as hers had lain. Other villages there were, 
and in these were other people, gentle people, people 
such as had been those that now lay dead and dying 
amid the red pyres of their homes. Gentle people 
like these there were, who did not yet realise all the 
reeking horrors that mankind can do to man. And 
if the invaders had not gone too fast, there might 
yet be time for some one to find these gentle people 



138 SCARS AND STRIPES 



and tell them of the reeking horrors so that, at least, 
they might save their lives in flight. 

This it was that Reason told her through all the 
tumult of the tearing, pounding ghouls. And this 
it was that she heard. And, hearing, she tried to 
rise to her feet. . . . Her arms were weak, like a 
baby's. . . . Her legs trembled beneath her. . . . 
She looked down at them, strangely. . . . 

And as she looked, wide of eye, drawn of lip, 
Reason again spoke. It told her that that of which 
she thought might well mean death — and worse. It 
told her that where she was, she was safe. Hid- 
den, she was, and secure. No one would come to 
the little pool where rested the river, where leaned 
the willows. There was no reason why any one 
should. So that, as long as she stayed there, she 
was safe. It told her that, their blood lust sated, the 
invaders might pass on ; that then she might find a 
place of permanent safety. Surely, there must be 
some place that w r as safe; so that, by staying where 
she was for perhaps a day and a night, she might 
at least save life, and that which is more precious 
than life. . . . 

So Reason told her. . . . She heard, and 
plainly. . . . 

She sank to her trembling knees. . . . And now 
another voice was calling. ... It was that of the 



MARY AND MARIE 139 

old river. It called softly, and unbelievably gently. 
... She listened. . . . Bye and bye, after a very 
long while, she rose again to her feet. . . . Her 
knees were stronger. . . . She stood as stood Joan 
of Arc who, too, heard voices. . . . And Marie lis- 
tened now not alone to Reason, not alone to the 
river, but, as well, to the voices of all the people 
of the gentle hills, the vast land-spread murmur of 
a happy people lying all unsuspecting beneath the 
peace of God's cupped hands — the peace the devil 
was so soon to ruin, to ravish and to wreck. All 
these she heard. And above all, the voice of God, 
Himself. . . . 

It is not always that those who try succeed. It 
is not always that those who succeed try. But to try, 
and not succeed is, to the one who tries, success; 
for that circumstances are against, or beyond, one 
in no way lessens the praise that one deserves. So 
it is that to try and not to succeed is so infinitely 
better than to succeed without trying. 

Marie was innocent. But she was not ignorant. 
When she left the shadows of the willows beside the 
little pool where the old river lay at rest, she knew 
full well what was in store for her if caught. She 
knew that women are born to be mothers. She 
knew that unbridled men are born to be beasts. . . . 



140 SCARS AND STRIPES 

These things she knew. But the voices of Reason 
and of the river, the land-spread murmur of the peo- 
ple of the gentle hills, and the voice of God Him- 
self were in her ears. . . . And so she went. 

I wish that the God who spoke would let me tell 
you that she went in safety. I wish He would. . t . 
But it was not so to be. He called in vain, as did 
the voices of Reason and the river, as did the land- 
spread murmur of the people of the gentle hills. . . . 

Morning came. 

Bruised and torn and naked, fouled of body by 
all the filth of earth, she crawled weakly on hands 
and knees back to the little pool where lay the river 
beneath the willows. . . . Crooning softly, as to a 
frightened child, the old river took her to his breast, 
the gentle old river that was so kindly and so wise. 
And in his kindness and his wisdom came to her 
torn, racked body and tortured brain, at length, 
the God-sent peace that passeth all understanding. 
. . . The willows shivered a little, in the morning 
mist. . . . Yet willows, you know, understand but 
little. . . . 

For, you see, her soul was so very clean. 

That night it was that Mary gave her party. It 
was a most brilliantly successful affair. There were 



MARY AND MARIE 141 
♦ 

eighty covers ; and, following the dinner, the guests 
danced until four in the morning. It was broad 
daylight when Mary went to bed, very happy, very 
beautiful, and — very drunk. 

All of which is, of course, quite as it should 
be. . . . Or is it? 



CHAPTER SIX 



'UNCLE SHAM" 



CHAPTER SIX 



"uncle sham" 



MY friend was wroth. 
"I may be a coward/' he said. "We may 
be a nation of cowards. But if we're not, I'm get- 
ting sick and tired of being held up to the rest of 
the world as a nation of cowards when, as a matter 
of fact, we're only a nation of fools." 

He gazed out into the gathering dusk. It was 
spring, warm and pulsing. 

"Fools?" I repeated. 

"Fools," he said. 

He turned. 

"If you pick certain men to represent you; if 
there comes a crisis; if you find that these men that 
you have placed in high position to protect and 
further your interests are weak and incompetent; 
if you find that because they themselves are without 
brain or bowels, they are leading other nations to 
believe that you yourself are equally as supine and 
pitiable; and if these other nations, finding that 
the men who represent you won't resent injury; 
that they won't protect their own rights, to say noth- 
ing of yours; that they are without courage, with- 

145 



146 SCARS AND STRIPES 

out vision, without strength, without the instinct 
of self-preservation that even a clam has, naturally 
begin to take advantage of your abjectness to blow 
up your factories, murder your fellow-men, women 
and babies — if, as I say, all these things happen, 
what are you if you allow these men to remain in 
power without even raising your voice in protest ?" 

I had no answer. 

"Half the nations of the world hate us/' he 
went on. "The other half despise us. And when 
a little, carbon-copy country like Mexico can make 
us a laughing-stock, can you blame 'em?" 

He tossed his cigar into the grate. 

"And this," he muttered, "is the nation that went 
to war over a tax on tea!" 

There fell a silence. . . . These are bitter, bitter 
days. . . • 

"I'd be ashamed that I am an American," he went 
on, at length, slowly, "if it weren't for one thing." 

"And that?" I queried. 

"That I know that the American spirit is not 
dead, but only dormant. They won't bear it for- 
ever, these men whose ancestors stood at Concord, 
and Lexington, at Gettysburg and the Alamo. . . . 

"God!" he exclaimed. "It would be laughable 
if only it weren't so ghastly. Take Mexico first. 
The Madero assassination. Chaos. American men 



it .,_>> 



UNCLE SHAM 147 

robbed ; American women ravished ; American chil- 
dren murdered. A good strong man could have 
jumped into the situation and saved all the horrible, 
bloody mess that followed. The vulture-souled 
bands that formed to prey on the torn corpse of 
their country could have been subdued even before 
they had gathered. The thing could have been 
strangled at birth. But what did we do? Watch- 
fully waited ! Armed them with guns and ammuni- 
tion, let them arm themselves, coyote-brained, coy- 
ote-hearted, for slaughter piled on slaughter, rape 
piled on rape, pillage and torture and horrors un- 
namable ! 

"Then Huerta! 

" 'Salute the flag V we say. 

" The devil I will !' says Huerta, or the Mexican 
equivalent thereof. 

" 'All right, then, don't salute it,' we say. 'We 
will be obeyed.' 

"And back home we come, carrying our dead. 

"Then Carranza. 
We will never recognise that man !' say we. 
1 should worry/ says Carranza, in the original 
tongue, knowing that Washington is a long way off 
and doesn't mean it anyway. 'You stop writing 
sassy letters to me, or I'll break your typewriter.' 

"Then along comes Villa. 






148 SCARS AND STRIPES 

" 'How about me?' he says to Washington. 

" 'You're the boy,' says Washington. 'Hop to it.' 

"And firmly believing in peace, we load him up 
the machine guns, and knives, and bricks in stock- 
ings, and chile con carne, and mescal, and all the 
other deadly weapons of Mexico. 

" 'And by the way,' we say, as Villa is sharpening 
his teeth and mobilising his wives and otherwise 
preparing to carry the banner of Christian virtue 
into the dark places, 'don't worry about that be- 
whiskered old trouble-maker, Carranza. We've 
eliminated him from the situation entirely.' 
How'd you do that?' asks Villa. 
Why,' we say, 'with an ink eraser.' And as 
Villa starts ofif, with a machine-gun under each arm 
and a knife between his teeth, we call after him. 
'And remember,' we say, 'that God is always on 
the side of the biggest typewriter.' 

"Villa begins. Inasmuch as he doesn't own an 
ink eraser and couldn't tell a typewriter from a 
cash-register, he is reduced to the more primitive 
methods of of- and de-fence, such as automatic re- 
volvers, and fingers, which he employs with success 
for a time. But finally Carranza, who has been say- 
ing nothing, but sawing wood, sneaks up behind him 
and gives him the bum's rush. Villa beats him to 
the border by a nose. 






< c „ _„„__»> 



UNCLE SHAM 149 



U ( 



: Hey!' he yells. 'Take that man offa me!' 

"We look up from our typewriter on which we 
are composing the opening chorus of the Pan- 
American Conference. 

" 'How dare you/ we say to Carranza. 'Don't 
you know that Villa is our recognised candidate for 
president of Mexico?' 

u 'Not by me he ain't recognised,' says Carranza. 
'I don't even know that Mexican Mormon by sight. 
Though I must admit/ he goes on, 'that I've seen 
pictures of him; and if I observe a small man, 
dressed principally in cartridges, coming down the 
plaza, I'm surely due to take a crack at him, and/ 
he adds, Til chew the bullet a little first. I'm the 
only little Mexican president I see around here/ he 
says, 'and I wear spectacles.' 

You won't let Villa be president ?' we say. 
I will not,' says Carranza. 
'All right, then,' we answer, 'you be president. 
We will be obeyed.' 

"And Villa, to show his disapproval, bulges out 
into the suburbs and begins to burn up ranches and 
murder the inhabitants, taking for his motto : 'Shoot 
Americans First.' 

"Then came the Lusitania. . . . When you think 
of that ! . . . God ! . . . Human beings, like you or 
me, on a peaceful ship. . , . Two o'clock of an 






150 SCARS AND STRIPES 

afternoon, in May. . . . And then — Trampled 
bodies, gasping in the agonies of death. . . . Torn 
flesh — gaping wounds. . . . Mothers with their 
babies. . . . The screams of tortured souls, choked 
into bubbling gasps beneath the waters. . . . Long 
wails, quivering, shivering. . . . Then silence. . . . 
Bodies. ... A man's, its head torn from its neck, 
the raw edges flopping with the waves. ... A 
woman's, with dead arms still holding to dead breast 
the dead flesh of her flesh, the dead blood of her 
blood. . . . Tens of them. . . . Hundreds of them. 
. . . The sea a vast charnel house. ... A million 
hells in one! 

"And we write a note. . . . We ask for a dis- 
avowal . . . and for reparation. . . . Good Lord 
in heaven ! 

"A disavowal! . . . Why didn't Becker think 
of that? 

"And reparation! ... A thousand dollars for 
your wife, five hundred apiece for your children, 
pro rated. . . . Maybe five per cent off, thirty days 
net. Steerage wives and children half price. 

"What is the market value of a human life?, 
Mine may not amount to much to the rest of the 
world. But it's all there is to me. ... A price 
upon my wife — my children? ... A joke for the 
devil in hell to laugh at! 



< < — ^ ~ r ^ « -r T . ^ » > 



UNCLE SHAM 151 

"The Liisitania! 

"It was as though there were two men fighting in 
the public street. Your wife has left her baby on 
the other side. She crosses to get it. One of the 
men kills her, deliberately, in cold, cold blood. 

"And what do you do ? Does the manhood in you 
come screaming to the surface at this awful thing? 
Not at all. You shake your finger at the murderer. 
'Now just for that/ you say, 'I'll hold you to strict 
accountability.' 

"You wait until the murderer takes his own good 
time to answer you. 

" 'She had no business to be there in the first 
place,' says the murderer. 'And besides, we told 
her we'd kill her if she didn't stay at home. And 
furthermore,' he says, 'she was armed,' he says. 
'She had a hat-pin.' 

" 'Ah-ha !' says you, 'that makes a difference. 
We will investigate the matter. I'll write you a 
note about it, which I shall expect you to answer 
by June 17th, or the Fourth of July, either date 
being appropriate, and if I find that she didn't have 
a hat-pin, but was holding on her hat with an elastic, 
or wearing a tam-o'-shanter, I shall at once expect 
a complete disavowal.' 

"And you go home, where you're expecting 
grandma for Christmas dinner. 



152 SCARS AND STRIPES 

"Just as the turkey is put on the table, the door- 
bell rings. You go to the door to admit grandma. 
But instead, it's the postman. He hands you a 
letter. It's from the German government. 

" 'Dear sir/ it reads, 'we regret to state that last 
Thursday we were forced to blow up your grand- 
mother. She was on a ship. She had no business 
to be on it because we said she had no business to 
be on it. No American has any business to be any- 
where except where we say he has any business to 
be. Enclosed please find money order for $81.75. 
She didn't have long to live, anyway. Kindly sign 
and return enclosed receipt form E. If you want a 
disavowal, we don't mind. Our voice is strong, and 
our supply of stationery practically unlimited. In 
fact, in spite of the English blockade, we have so 
much of everything that we scarcely know where 
to put it. Hoping that this will prove satisfactory, 
we remain. . . / 

"All of which is calculated to make a chap feel 
fine, and especially be of benefit to grandma. 

"Well, to go back, we start an investigation of 
the Lusitania. 

"Then the Germans blow up the Arabic. 

"We stop investigating the Lusitania and start 
investigating the Arabic. 

"The Germans blow up the Hesperian. 



< C _. 9 9 



UNCLE SHAM 153 

"We stop investigating the Lusitania and Arabic 
and start investigating the Hesperian. 

'The Germans blow up the Ancona. 

"We stop investigating the Lusitania, the Arabic 
and the Hesperian and start investigating the An- 
cona. 

"The Germans blow up the Persia. 

"We stop investigating the Lusitania, the Arabic, 
the Hesperian and the Ancona and start investigat- 
ing the Persia. 

"It's a great little game. It sounds like The 
House That Jack Built. Twenty can play as well 
as one. And there's no end to it as long as there's 
a ship left to blow up. 

"In the meanwhile, we're busy writing notes. 
You see, we have to write one every time they blow 
up a ship. Then we have to write another to tell 
them what we meant by the first one. Then we have 
to write another to tell them that we meant it. And 
even then, they don't believe us. We can run a 
typewriter now with each hand, and we're learning 
to operate a third with our feet. 

"Take, for example, our latest note, in protest of 
the torpedoing of the Persia, murdering more help- 
less souls, and killing an American consul. It's a 
masterpiece. 



154 SCARS AND STRIPES 

M 'His Imperial Majesty's Imperial Chancel- 
lor, 

" 'Imperial Berlin, 

" 'Imperial Germany. 
" 'Imperial Dear Sir : 

" 'In reply to your note re the Persia, would say 
that the American government will not be satisfied 
with anything less than what it has already not been 
satisfied with in the cases of the Lusitania, the 
Arabic, the Hesperian, the Ancona, etc. The Amer- 
ican government stands for something higher than 
the sanctity of human life. I'll explain just what 
that is later. Nevertheless, we stand. We've been 
standing quite a while, it's true; but we shall con- 
tinue to stand with the same unswerving fidelity to 
the higher laws of humanity, and the nobler pre- 
cepts of mankind.' 

"It's a good note. It sounds like something. It 
could almost be set to music and sung by a female 
quartette, between Bryan and the trained seals. 

"The German reply goes something like this : 

"'Lansing (and that is certainly what they're 
doing to us), 

" 'Washington. 
" 'Dear Sir : 

" 'Your note No. 5,706 (and that's funny enough 
as it is) rec'd and contents noted. In reply would 
state that we don't know anything about the matter 
at all. Anyhow, it wasn't we that did it. It was 



<■ < — -^ ^ ^ -^ O. -T^ A * - > ' 



UNCLE SHAM 155 

probably Austria. If it wasn't Austria, it might 
have been Bulgaria. Or Turkey or somebody. Or 
spontaneous combustion or something. However, 
if a disavowal will make you stop writing letters to 
us and begin writing them to England, you're wel- 
come. What is one disavowal between friends? 
And besides, we have more of everything now than 
we want, including notes. The report that the Eng- 
lish have made it impossible for us to use our sub- 
marines in the English Channel is a vile and mali- 
cious lie. We quit because we just got tired. Our 
Mediterranean ones aren't tired yet, but they may 
be soon. When they are, I'll send you a Mediter- 
ranean disavowal. I might add that we have so 
many supplies in Germany that we haven't room to 
sit down. Kind regards to William Jennings Bryan 
and Hank Ford. Hoping you are the same (yes, 
we do!), 

'Von Jagow.' 



a r 



"And there you are. Another triumph for us ! 

" 'But,' says the Pork Barrel Politician from 
Medicine Hat, 'we keep out of the war. You gotter 
admit that.' 

"I do. That's true enough. We do keep out of 
the war. . . . But how ? By allowing other nations 
to massacre our citizens; by relinquishing one by 
one our inalienable rights — noisily and pompously 
relinquishing, but relinquishing none the less surely 
and certainly. We keep out of a fight because every 



156 SCARS AND STRIPES 

time our adversary advances, we back up. They've 
backed us out of Mexico; they've backed us off the 
ocean. Already in fact, if not in word, they've taken 
away the inalienable rights of Americans to travel 
on the high seas. If they wanted to take away their 
inalienable rights to the Atlantic seaboard, it would 
be the same thing. We'd retreat, holding our type- 
writer in one hand and writing notes on it with the 
other. If they wanted the inalienable Middle West, 
it would again be the same. And we'd finally wind 
up in an inalienable cyclone cellar in Sacramento; 
and if they wanted that, we'd pack up our type- 
writer and start swimming across the Pacific, the 
while writing a note about the inalienable rights of 
Americans to swim in the Pacific Ocean. We'd be 
safe in Japan. Unpopular, perhaps, but safe. The 
Japs aren't too proud to fight. They're too proud 
not to. That's what's putting silver threads among 
the gold in the whiskers of California. " 

My friend gazed into the fire. 

"Our triumphs," he went on, "remind me of the 
man that got into a fight and then wrote home about 
it to his folks. 

"'This vile person,' he wrote, 'insulted me; 
whereat I properly resented it. He struck at me. 
I warded off the blow with my nose, at the same 
time placing my left shin against his right foot. 



i i _ __ . 55 



UNCLE SHAM 157 

He swung at me again, at which I stopped the blow 
with my stomach, and at the same time catching 
his other fist with my left eye. I thereupon lay 
down upon the ground, pulling him over on top of 
me. I don't remember much about the rest, but they 
tell me that I successfully warded off his repeated 
blows with various parts of my person. I am writ- 
ing this in the presence of two doctors and a trained 
nurse, who are at my bedside congratulating me on 
my glorious victory, while my despicable and thor- 
oughly beaten adversary is downstairs in the bar, 
buying alcoholic refreshment and trying to explain 
his humiliating defeat at my hands to a party of 
pitying friends/ 

"The trouble with America is that it has tried to 
substitute oratory for action. At the start of the 
war, it looked as though America were something 
to be reckoned with. It had fought and won some 
good, hard battles. It looked like an immovable 
object. And Germany, which considered itself an 
irresistible force, lined up for the prospective im- 
pact. But when the irresistible force launched itself, 
it didn't encounter an immovable object. It met in- 
stead a weak and windy old cripple full of phrase- 
ology and fear. 

"At which the other nations all sat down and had 
a good laugh. 



it ( 
it ( 



158 SCARS AND STRIPES 

" 'Who's the old guy with the plug hat and the 
striped pants sitting over there counting his money V 
asks Austria. 

r Oh, only Uncle Sham/ says Germany. 
'Will he stand up for his rights?' asks Austria. 
r Stand up for his rights P says Germany. 'Why, 
only last week I blew up a bunch of his folks and all 
he did was holler. Stand up for his rights P says 
Germany scornfully. 'He's got about as much spirit 
as an angleworm. Alongside of him, a jellyfish 
looks like a Numidian lion. He's been sitting around 
on the edge of this free-for-all for a year and a half 
now, and he hasn't had sense enough to buy himself 
even a bean-shooter. 

"'Hello,' says Germany, turning around, 'here 
comes a ship with some Americans on it. Let's blow 
it up so he'll write me another note. I haven't had 
any fun in a week.' 

"And the other nations, seeing Germany getting 
away with it, say to themselves, 'Why in Sam Hill 
should we pay any attention to the McGuffey Third 
Reader stuff that this old bird with the chin piece 
is pulling? If he gets in the way slam him one. 
All he'll do will be to go home and write somebody 
a letter about it.' 

"And there's the poor old man to-day. Nobody 
likes him. Nobody respects him. Even a little na- 



C( .„. . _ -^ . - - * * 



UNCLE SHAM 159 

tion like Mexico sits in the corner thumbing its 
nose, and every once in a while shying a brick at 
him. 

"And the reason is that he showed himself up as 
a verbose old four-flusher right at the jump. Watch- 
ful Waiting! Is that anything but a synonym for 
Ignominious Inaction? Or Contemptible Cow- 
ardice? First Mexico bluffed him to a standstill. 
Huerta is dead — but he never saluted the flag. 

"And Germany, seeing our mighty policy of 
Supine Shamelessness, blows up the Lusitania. . . . 
After that, why worry? All the old incompetent 
will do is to holler his head off for a disavowal. 
And if the German treaty with Belgium was only a 
scrap of paper, what in blazes is a disavowal? 

"No man is afraid of anybody he can lick. And 
when anybody starts in to make it a point to take a 
licking every day before breakfast; when a man 
lets even ten-year-old children and cripples wallop 
him ; when he hasn't enough sand to resent even the 
slaughter of his children in cold blood and the rape 
of his women in colder, how can he expect anything 
but contempt, scorn, hatred and abuse? 

"These people that say that if Roosevelt had been 
president, we would long ago have been plunged 
into the war make me sick. We would have taken 
a definite and determined stand at the outset, and 



160 SCARS AND STRIPES 

there would never have been begun this miserable 
chain of circumstances that has kept us twisting and 
turning and shifting and sidestepping like an old 
maid in a mud puddle. . . . It's the present policy 
of Be Sure You're Right and Then Back Up that's 
done that. . . . You don't start anything with a 
strong man. You don't dare to. You don't tell 
Jack Johnson what you think of him. You know 
mighty well that if you do, you'll review the pro- 
ceedings from the third astral plane. But your 
Uncle Henry, who is old and feeble, you can maul 
around as you choose. If Roosevelt had been 
president, things would never have started to begin 
to commence. 

"If he had told Huerta to salute the flag, you 
bet your life Huerta would have saluted it, or they'd 
have gone to the mat. And it wouldn't have been 
the old Indian that was on his feet, dusting off his 
clothes, at the finish. 

"And the Lusitania 

"One bright, May morning, that benevolent old 
humanitarian, von Tirpitz, pirouettes up to the Im- 
perial Palace where the Kaiser is sitting on the front 
stoop, sharpening his moustaches and waiting for 
the postman to bring him his bread ticket. 

" 'Good morning, Von/ says the Kaiser. 

" 'Good morning, Kais/ says von Tirpitz. 



t i .„. „ ^ ^ « «. A ^, > J 



UNCLE SHAM 161 

" 'Well, what's on your mind ?' says the Kaiser. 

" 'I've got an idea that it would be a good scheme 
to blow up the Lusitania/ says von Tirpitz, gently 
shooing a meadowlark out of his whiskers. 'It'll 
show the world that we mean business.' 

" 'I don't know about that,' says the Kaiser. 
'There'll be a lot of Americans on board.' 

" 'What difference does that make ?' says von 
Tirpitz. 'Though if you feel like that about it, we 
can tell 'em to keep off.' 

" 'Tell 'em to keep off !' says the Kaiser. 'Tell 
Americans to keep off the high seas?' he says. 
'You've got a corpulent chance. I guess you don't 
know who's president of the United States, do you?' 

" 'Why, no,' says von Tirpitz, 'a lot of unim- 
portant details escape me from time to time.' 

" 'Then I'll tell you,' says the Kaiser. 'It's my 
old pal Theodore. And, believe me, he's a tough 
guy. You tell Americans to keep off the high seas, 
and he's liable to hop over here and help himself to 
a handful of your whiskers, to say nothing of put- 
ting both front feet in the middle of my dining- 



room.' 



" 'But he's got nothing to hop with,' says von 
Tirpitz. T could lick his whole army with one hand 
without missing a meal.' 

" 'He's got a navy,' says the Kaiser. 'And if 



162 SCARS AND STRIPES 

you pull anything like that, he'll just send a convoy 
of about six torpedo-boat destroyers, and then 
where'll we be?' 

" 'But/ says von Tirpitz 

" 'Shut up/ says the Kaiser. 'I know that lad 
well. And besides, look what he did to Huerta. 
He's a bad hombre. You try that thing you just 
suggested, and he'll be over here if it's only with his 
teeth/ 

"And then, as von Tirpitz starts to continue, he 
pushes him off the front porch. 

" That idea is cold/ says the Kaiser. 'Goose- 
step yourself home and think of something else. 
And when you come poking around here again 
with an idea, it had better be good. I'm taking no 
chances of antagonising a nation of a hundred mil- 
lion people with a rough lad like Roosevelt running 
it. I've got trouble enough now. If you feel that 
you must have exercise,' he adds, 'go down and 
slam a few shells into that bum cathedral at Rheims. 
I've been wanting to get rid of that eyesore for 
years.' 

"And the Lusitania would still be sailing regu- 
larly. 

"And would Roosevelt, do you think, standing in 
the middle of a war-mad world, have allowed eight- 
een months to elapse, as the present administration 



c « .._ .^ ^ „ . , , > > 



UNCLE SHAM 163 

has done, without accomplishing as much as the 
executive committee of the Village Improvement 
Association could do in two meetings? Would it 
have taken him a year and a half to decide whether 
he wanted fourteen battleships with fifteen-inch 
guns, or fifteen battleships with fourteen-inch guns? 
And trying to settle whether he wanted a national 
guard or a constitutional reserve? Would he have 
called in all the naval and military experts for their 
opinion and then have let that opinion be all gummed 
up by a Josephus Daniels ? Josephus Daniels ! Look 
at him ! . . . That's long enough. YouVe seen it all. 
"Would Roosevelt have done these things? Not 
he ! He'd have said, 'I want a lot of good soldiers 
and I want 'em quick. And I want the best navy I 
can get, and a flock of munitions. And if they 
aren't here by a week from Thursday, somebody'll 
be busy putting ads. in the Situations Wanted 
column.' And if the peanut-headed pacifists and 
politicians who habitually have come to regard our 
Congressional halls as a combination pork barrel 
and dormitory, had opposed him, he'd have gone 
over their heads to appeal to the American people. 
And you know what they'd have said, don't you? 
If they were willing to stand for Wilson's Policies, 
can't you see how God-awful joyful they would be 
to stand by Roosevelt's ? 



164 SCARS AND STRIPES 

"Many people in this country seem to have an 
idea in their, so to speak, intellects that all these 
wondrous blessings of peace, prosperity, health, 
wealth and happiness that we have been enjoying 
for the past half-hundred years came to them from 
the all-loving beneficence of a sort of apotheosised 
Santa Claus, who wafted down the national chim- 
ney, bearing them on his back. 

"But is such the case? Hardly! The blessings 
that we possess to-day were won for us by our 
ancestors, and won by the sweat of their brows, 
the toil of their bodies and the blood of their hearts. 
That there are nine million, or whatever it is, auto- 
mobiles owned in the United States to-day is because 
our ancestors walked nine million miles behind prai- 
rie schooners; cleared the land with an axe in one 
hand and a gun in the other ; were massacred by the 
Indians and the British ; died of heat and cold and 
exposure; but, nevertheless, with chins firm and 
heads up, fought on, and on, and on, watering with 
their blood and fertilising with their bones the rich 
and running land that is ours to-day. They defied 
tyranny. And laid down their lives for the liberty 
we now enjoy. Enjoy, did I say? I mean, abuse! 

"And we, their descendants, wallowing supinely 
in the wondrous wealth of this heritage that has 
come down to us, fat, spoiled, peevish and prosper- 



6 C ^ ,, ^^„.,_>> 



UNCLE SHAM 165 

ous, the Rich Man's Sons of the world, confronted 
for the first time in fifty years with an unpleasant 
duty, shirk and whine and snivel and evade ! What 
we need is a darned good spanking. 

"Suppose our forebears had done as we are doing 
now; Pocahontas, and George Washington, and 
Patrick Henry, and Abraham Lincoln, and U. S. 
Grant and Nathan Hale ? 

"Can you picture Pocahontas, as she watched her 
father getting ready to make a souffle of the head of 
Captain John Smith, with a stone hatchet, saying, 
'Aw, I should worry! Let father bean him if he 
wants to. He had no business to be here in the 
first place.' 

"Can you see George Washington, under the elm 
in Cambridge, refusing to take command of the 
Continental army because he was too proud to fight ? 

"And Lincoln demanding of the South that they 
free the slaves, and the South refusing, and then 
Lincoln saying, 'All right, then. Don't free them. 
I'll show you who's boss around here.' 

"And Patrick Henry, rising in the assembly at 
Williamstown, Virginia, and making his famous 
speech, 'And as for me, give me liberty or I'll write 
'em a letter about it.' How long would that speech 
have remained in the school readers? 

"And U. S. Grant, declaring to his generals, Til 



166 SCARS AND STRIPES 

fight it out on this line if I use up all my stationery/ 

"And Nathan Hale, emitting the valiant words 
that have rung down the corridors of time, 'My only 
regret is that I have but one typewriter to lay down 
for my country.' 

"And Marion, the Swamp Fox, living for seven 
years in a hollow tree, subsisting on Spanish moss 
and cold potatoes. . . . 

"Did these men, and the thousands like them, 
do the things that they did because they enjoyed it? 
Did they leave comfortable homes, their wives, their 
children, their means of livelihood, and go and 
sleep in the mud and live on dog biscuit with worms 
in it; and fall forward with bloody gashes in their 
bodies made by Hessian-chewed bullets; finally to 
be dumped into a long trench on a barren hillside 
where their bones should rot unnamed, unknown, 
because they were tired of the monotony of peace? 

"They did not. They did these things because 
they were Men. Because to them there was one 
thing more horrible even than the horrors of war; 
and that was the kind of peace that makes of men 
slaves, and of women concubines. . . . 

"And it is because of these splendid Men from 
whose loins we sprang — of these glorious women 
that gave us birth, that I say there's yet hope for 
your old Uncle Sham. He may have been a poor 



t < . _ •._..«_>> 



UNCLE SHAM 167 

old fool; but he's all right at heart. Already he's 
changed from a pacifist to a weakling. Soon, pray 
God, he'll be a man again. And when he does, 
when finally he cleans out his brain and his capitol, 
look out for him ! 

"Don't forget that he's the same old lad that 
licked the Indians ; that, with nothing but a muzzle- 
loading flintlock and one suspender, walloped the 
English at Bunker Hill ; that bathed himself in blood 
at Gettysburg ; that freed Cuba and the Philippines ; 
and that, because of wrong to American citizens, 
sailed half across the world to Tripoli to hang the 
murderers to their own yard-arms. He's stood up 
for his own, and for other people's, rights for a 
good long time now. He's fought the fight of God 
and man for a good big handful of generations. 
Don't blame him too harshly that he's wrong now ; 
it's that he's weakly listened to the bad advice of a 
lot of bad advisers; and even they, perhaps, have 
meant well. But 'He Meant Well/ is a weakling's 
excuse, and a fool's epitaph." 

My friend rose and looked out into the dying 
day. 

"I'm proud that I'm an American of course," he 
said, slowly. "Only, I wish to God we'd wake up !" 



CHAPTER SEVEN 



"WE'LL DALLY 'ROUND 
THE FLAG, BOYS!" 



CHAPTER SEVEN 
"we'll dally 'round the flag, boys!" 

WE were discussing Latest Developments. It 
was my friend who spoke. 
"When, in the year nineteen fifty-something, His- 
tory shall sit back in his chair, light a good free- 
burning five-cent cigar, and look over the notes he 
made contemporaneously as to what your Uncle 
Samuel was doing during the first two years of the 
great war in Europe, he'll certainly have a hard 
time believing what he then jotted down was really 
so. And the more he reads, the more the actions of 
your dignified Uncle will remind him of the old 
lady that went to sleep and dreamed she was awake 
and then woke up to find she was asleep. And 
when at length History puts down his notes and 
sharpens his lead pencil, he'll heave a sigh and 
murmur sadly, 'I can't write any such stuff as that. 
Nobody'll believe it in the first place, and they'll 
think I'm crazy besides. And if all Uncle Sam's 
grandchildren don't come around and beat me up, 
they'll sure sue me for libel a whole lot.' But, being 
hired by the year, History'll have to write it; and, 

what is worse, our children and our children's chil- 

171 



172 SCARS AND STRIPES 

dren will have to read it. At which they're going 
to get red in the face and stutter and try to explain 
to the rest of the world that they're really very 
sorry and if they'd had any idea of what actually 
was going on, they'd have called in a couple of good 
alienists and had the old man examined and put in 
some nice place where he could have imagined he 
was Napoleon without annoying anybody. 

"Look at the old chap now. He's sitting back 
with his chest all puffed out because he thinks he's 
told Germany where to head in at, gosh ding it, 
while even before we can finish this conversation 
Germany may have decided that it's to her interest 
to change her mind, as she threatened, and blow 
up a lot more of our ships and citizens and thereby 
force him to begin writing notes again ; for, if any- 
thing has been adduced to show that Germany is 
any the less willing, and any the less able, to blow 
up our ships now than she was two years ago, it 
hasn't been revealed to an anxious public. If the 
treaty with Belgium was only a scrap of paper, 
what in heaven's name is a note more or less to the 
United States? And yet here the old man is sitting 
back as though he'd really done something, without 
even sense enough to save himself work by having 
the old notes mimeographed, leaving blank places 
for the proper names and improper actions, in case 



i I 



DALLY 'ROUND THE FLAG!'' 173 



he shall have to start in with a new series, numbers 
6,701 to 9,407, inclusive. 

"And, having thus attained no solution at all of 
anything with Germany, he thereupon keeps on writ- 
ing notes to Mexico in pursuit, apparently, of the 
same valueless objective, at the same time sending 
into that stricken, chaotic country a punitive expedi- 
tion that does nothing but make Mexico sore and 
himself ridiculous; and then to further complicate 
proceedings, he calls out an ill-equipped, untrained 
and unacclimated National Guard, fine in spirit and 
in patriotism to be sure, but wofully helpless in 
potential accomplishment. 

"If writing notes can settle anything, why 
do we call out soldiers? If writing notes 
can't settle anything, why have we been writ- 
ing them for three years? And if writing notes 
fails to accomplish anything in Mexico, why 
should it be expected to accomplish anything 
with Germany, or England, or any other power? 
And if we need soldiers to defend ourselves 
against Mexico, or to defend Mexico against her- 
self, why don't we need ten times as many to de- 
fend ourselves against nations ten times as large? 
And when it comes to that, what are we trying 
to do in the first place? We are either attempt- 
ing to do things by notes, or by force. We are 



174 SCARS AND STRIPES 

either in danger of war, or we aren't. We either 
need soldiers, or we don't. If we do need them, we 
need enough. If we don't need them, we don't 
need any. All of which is so obvious that if a six- 
year-old adolescent can't see it, he should be put 
back making paper-mats in the kindergarten. And 
yet your Uncle Sam, confronted with these ques- 
tions in elementary intelligence, says one day that 
we are in no danger of being involved in trouble, 
and the next day sits back on his haunches and howls 
like a wolf for the biggest navy in the world. One 
day he is too proud to fight, and the next he feels 
himself in a fighting mood. One day he wants this 
kind of an army, the next he wants that kind, the 
third some other kind, and the fourth he doesn't 
want any at all ! One day he says that all the Eu- 
ropean nations are mad and not to be held account- 
able to the mental processes of the sane. The next 
day he wants to arbitrate, according to his own 
statement, among lunatics in a mad-house. It must 
please a nation like France, spirited, spiritual, de- 
fending its very hearthstone against rape, rapine 
and slaughter, to be compared to the nation that 
committed the Belgian atrocities and sunk the Lasi- 
tania. It would be like seeing a fine earnest citizen 
trying to protect his women, his children and his 
home against a red-handed maniac, and then have a 



c c 



DALLY 'ROUND THE FLAG!" 175 



nice old gentleman with whiskers stand across the 
street with his hands in his pockets and say, 'Look 
at those two poor nuts ! After I get through count- 
ing the petty cash and getting the deliveries off, I'll 
go over and arbitrate 'em a whole lot/ And what 
makes it all more startlingly grotesque, he first says 
they're crazy, and then that he's willing to arbitrate ! 
If they're crazy, how can he arbitrate? And if he 
can arbitrate, then they can't be crazy; so why 
did he say so in the first place? One day he says, 
forgetting that Mexico is a nation of Indians crossed 
with bad Spanish, that that stricken and helpless 
country has the same right to work out its own sal- 
vation that had the educated and able citizens of 
Colonial America; and even while he is saying it 
with one hand, with the other he is chasing the in- 
habitants of Haiti and San Domingo so far back in 
the hills that they haven't seen the custom house in 
weeks. If Mexico has that right, why hasn't Haiti? 
If Haiti hasn't, why has Mexico? 

"One day he accuses Carranza of being a treach- 
erous accomplice of murderers in the committing 
of outrages, atrocities and mutilations and the next 
day he writes him notes as though he were a civilised 
being, neglecting to explain why, if Carranza is 
a treacherous accomplice of murderers, he is any 
more deserving of notes than a Gyp the Blood. And 



176 SCARS AND STRIPES 

the third day he says that what he wrote about 
Carranza wasn't so but said only to arouse the 
United States and to frighten Carranza. One day 
he sends soldiers into Mexico, and the next day he 
takes 'em out. Then he sends 'em in again. Then 
he takes those out. Then he calls out some more, 
but not a third enough to accomplish anything. 
Then he tells some of these they needn't go. Then 
he writes some more notes. Then he doesn't write 
some more notes. And the higher the fewer. And 
why is a mouse when it spins? 

"And there you have the poor old man horning in 
one day on matters that are none of his business; 
horning out the next on matters that are ; butting in 
here, butting out there; half at peace, half at war 
and half in the hearts of his countrymen, entirely 
unready to make war yet entirely helpless to make 
peace, shaking his fist one minute and his finger the 
next. And what his idea is, if he has any, which 
he hasn't, goodness knows; for when you pin him 
down to facts, he rises and maunders something 
about America first and the higher laws of humanity 
and the nobler duties of mankind and sits down 
amid the ladylike applause of a few people with 
pear-shaped heads and no chins who have come 
to listen to him because mother was housecleaning 
and they didn't have anywhere else to go. 



"dally 'round the flag!" 177 

"Poor, poor old Uncle Sam ! That fine, splendid, 
wonderful old man ! To have let himself be dragged 
so far to folly, so deep in deceit, by these few men 
he has placed in power to think for him and to act 
for him, and who have failed him so utterly ! . . . 
And how ache the hearts of his children! 

"What must think Abraham Lincoln, and U. S. 
Grant, and Sherman, and Sheridan of their country 
to-day; what must think all those splendid men in 
blue that went to war in '61 for an ideal; even as 
what must think Lee, and Jackson and Beauregard 
and the splendid men in grey who fought so bravely 
with them for an ideal? 

"Can't you see them now, grim and bronzed, 
grouped around the fires of night, singing their bat- 
tle songs ? Td like to make a little side bet that for 
one thing they've got the songs rewritten for us, 
starting with, 



a i 



We'll dally 'round the flag, boys, we'll dally once 

again, 
Writing more notes about our freedom.' 

"And the next, 



a t 



John Brown's body keeps a-turning in its grave, 
John Brown's body keeps a-turning in its grave, 
John Brown's body keeps a-turning in its grave 
As we go maund'ring on.' 



178 SCARS AND STRIPES 



a 



And following that with, 

" 'We shall meet, but we'll do nothing, 
There will be one vacant stare. 
We will linger to write letters, 
And we'll lick our foes with prayer/ 

"And, 

" Tut another ribbon in, we'll w r rite another note, 
This will be the nicest one that we have ever 

wrote, 
One that sure will bring to us the Pacifistic vote, 
While we all wait for election !' 

"Can you appreciate their feelings as they read 
over our latest correspondence with Carranza — a 
correspondence which, while the first forty or fifty 
letters were models of formality, courtesy and dic- 
tion and as good as any correspondence school in 
the country could teach you in five lessons, later 
grew sassier and sassier. It went something like 
this! 

V. Carranza, Esq., 

Mexico City. 
Dear Sir: 

Inasmuch as the bandit, Francisco Villa, has en- 
tered United States territory and ruthlessly slaugh- 
tered United States citizens, it is the desire of the 



i. < 



DALLY 'ROUND THE FLAG!" 179 



United States government to send in troops to ap- 
prehend said bandit. Therefore I respectfully re- 
quest permission of the Mexican defective — I mean 
de facto — -government to send United States troops 
into Mexico. Hoping you are well and with kind 
regards, 

Uncle Sam. 

"To which the answer: 

Uncle Sam, 

Washington. 
Dear Sir: 

You may or may not send in troops. If you do, 
or do not, it is under three conditions. The first is 
that you don't let them use the roads or the rail- 
roads. The second is that they go home when we 
say so. The third is that they don't come in in the 
first place. 

Carranza. 



a 



And in reply to this: 



V. Carranza, 

Mexico City. 
Dear Sir: 

Thank you for your kind letter of last month, or 
some time. We were quite sure of your whole- 
souled and generous cooperation in this matter and 
are heartily glad to make our soldiers walk, and as 
soon as we can find out where they're manufactured 



♦ 



180 SCARS AND STRIPES 

we're going to send them a motor-truck which will 
be very nice, don't you think so? 

Uncle Sam. 

"Then, after going in to catch Villa with about 
as much chance of accomplishing said feat as a blind 
man has of catching a bat in the Mammoth Cave, 
comes the following: 

Uncle Sam, 

. Washington, D. C. 

I must immediately request that you remove your 
soldiers, as I find that their present presence is mak- 
ing the Mexican people sore at me, and if you don't 
know what a Mexican is like when he's sore, come 
down some time and pay me a little visit and I'd 
admire to show you, and bring your friends with 
you. The more the merrier. Don't make any plans 
though as to when you'll be back home as your folks 
are liable to be disappointed. Hence, in pursuance 
of the second clause of our recent agreement, I must 
respectfully urge that you take your soldiers out 
quick. I must also call to your attention the third 
condition, which was that you wasn't to send 'em 
in in the first place. 

Carranza. 

"And the reply; the most amazing epistolatory 
national confession since the German chancellor 
declared the treaty with Belgium a scrap of paper, 
since it admits that for three years we have allowed 



i i 



DALLY 'ROUND THE FLAG!" 181 



our citizens to be murdered in Mexico and have 
done nothing about it except to write notes : 

Carranza, 

Mexico City. 
In pursuance to your recent note, we cannot take 
our soldiers out, as to do so would put us in Dutch 
ourselves. For three years now, American lives 
have been sacrificed, American enterprises de- 
stroyed, there have been committed on American 
citizens outrage after outrage, atrocity after atroc- 
ity; and this with your full knowledge while you 
stood by powerless or unwilling to prevent. We 
have tried to be nice about the matter of the taking 
of American lives. All we have done about it in 
three years is to write you notes — an I for an eye, 
and a note for a life, so to speak — and as far as we 
are concerned, we'd keep on until you died of old 
age or something; because we are a great and hu- 
mane country and we don't believe in making war 
on weak and helpless nations, not even when they 
are licking us. But we beg to advise you that we 
are going to leave our soldiers stay where they are, 
and what do you know about that ? 

Uncle Sam. 

"To which amazing epistle, Carranze replies: 

Uncle Sam, 

Washington, D. C. 
Your nasty letter received. If you think you're 
going to beat me by talking me to death, you've got 



182 SCARS AND STRIPES 

another guess coming. I may raise whiskers but 
I've been off the farm a long time. Furthermore, 
I'm sick of setting up all night reading your letters. 
My bills for having them translated is running up 
into hundreds; and after they're translated, they 
ain't worth anything anyhow except as samples of 
what not to do in diplomacy. So all I've got to say 
is you pack up your soldiers and get out of my coun- 
try. Don't think you can bluff me, you great big 
piece of cheese. 

Respectfully, 

V. Carranza. 



a 



To which the response 



V. Carranza, Esq., 

Mexico City. 
Is that so ? Well, we feel in a fighting mood this 
morning and we don't believe in words that aren't 
translated into deeds. 

Uncle Sam. 



a 



And to this 



Uncle Sam, 

Washington, D. C. 
Don't make me laugh. If you don't believe in 
words that aren't translated into deeds, why haven't 
you translated some? If you don't understand the 
language, you can find a dictionary in any book 
store. In closing I have only to remark, you get 



i i 



DALLY 'ROUND THE FLAG!' 183 



your soldiers out of here; if you don't, you won't 
know 'em next time you see 'em. I've already issued 
orders to General Trevino, that gallant patriot and 
humanitarian, that if he catches 'em marching any 
way except backwards, to cut loose at 'em a whole 
lot. And as he loves 'em about as much as I do, 
he's due to put his whole, earnest soul into the en- 
deavour. 

Carranza. 

"And after making good his threat and slaughter- 
ing a number of the Tenth Cavalry and taking a 
number of others as prisoners, comes this : 

V. Carranza, Esq., 

Mexico City. 
How dare you kill our soldiers, you nasty horrid 
old thing ? You give us back our prisoners, or we'll 
declare war on you. We've already called out our 
National Guard, and as soon as they can find the 
shoes we haven't provided them with, they'll walk 
down there ; and then you better look out ! 

"And from Carranza, as he surrenders his cap- 
tives — and I want to stop right here to say that my 
hat's off to these men of the Tenth. If we'd had a 
little of their spirit at Washington the last three 
years, things would have been a whole lot different 
to-day : 



184 SCARS AND STRIPES 

Uncle Sam, 

Washington. 
Take your darned old soldiers. I don't want 'em 
anyhow. 

"And to this: 

Carranza, 

Mexico City. 
Thank you for returning the soldiers you didn't 
kill. It was very nice of you, but it doesn't quite 
settle the matter. If you will be so good, we would 
like to know what are your plans for the future ? 

"And the reply: 

Uncle Sam, 

Washington. 
None of your darn business. 



a 



And to this: 



Carranza, 

Mexico City. 
We would like further information or we will be 
forced to take definite and determined action. Just 
what action we will take when we haven't got any- 
thing to act with, would require too long to explain. 
Nevertheless, we are prepared in mind and in soul, 
at least ; therefore, we must demand a more explicit 
answer. 



"dally 'round the flag!" 185 

"To which: 

Uncle Sam, 

Washington. 
Aw, shut up ! You make me tired. 

Carranza. 



* 



a 



And to this : 



Carranza, 

Mexico City. 
Shut up yourselfl 

Uncle Sam. 

"And then what ? Did they come to blows ? Not 
these two lads. Seeing that for once in his life 
your Uncle had risen above the control of his mean 
advisers and was about to take things in his own 
hands, Carranza climbs right down off his Perch- 
eron. 

"And what does your Uncle Samuel do? Does 
he, finding that the first concrete action he's taken in 
three years is productive of immediate result, decide 
to pursue further that successful course? Not he! 
Thinking that because once Carranza has spoken 
civilly to him he's won another great victory; and 
that because he's still got plenty of typewriting paper 
he's again fully prepared for any contingency, he 
slides back easily and gently into his former vicious 



186 SCARS AND STRIPES 

habits and becomes once again a poor old word- 
drunkard, fuddling his brains with language and 
laxing his will with verbiage the while he embarks 
on another pitiable orgy of phraseology and another 
shameless debauch of words. 

"And what has he really accomplished ? Not one 
single solitary thing — except delay. What have all 
his incursions and excursions from and to Mexico 
amounted to? Mexico under Diaz was like our own 
south under slavery. There were two classes; the 
grossly rich, and the pitiably poor. Mexico City 
under these conditions was one of the most beauti- 
ful cities of the world, replete of magnificence and 
munificence, of jewels and Paris gowns, and import- 
ed limousines and having a twenty-six-million-dollar 
opera-house. Then, in contradistinction to our own 
south where we freed the slaves/the slaves freed 
themselves. The rich lost control ; some were killed, 
the rest fled the country leaving it in control of vari- 
ous bands of roving marauders, ignorant, savage, 
cruel, treacherous, but having leaders of sufficient 
intelligence to read and write notes, pillaging, loot- 
ing, raping and robbing in the name of Liberty but 
under the mantle of License. And that is where 
stands the Mexico of to-day. 

"To those that urge that Mexico have the right 
to work out her own salvation it is but to say that 



"dally 'round the flag!" 187 

if she had that right why did we not recognise it 
when she had the chance ? She had Huerta. Huerta 
was a strong man. Huerta had eighty thousand sol- 
diers. Mexico could have worked out her own sal- 
vation through Huerta. To be sure, she would have 
wallowed in blood from Chiapas to Chihuahua. But 
she could have done it. But when she had the 
power, we didn't recognise her right. And now that 
we have taken away the power, we would give her 
back the right ! After having taken away Mexico's 
only chance to work out her so to speak salvation, 
we talk about giving it back to her when it's too 
late for her to use it. And if that isn't a darned fool 
idea, then I don't know what is. 

"Having then deprived Mexico of her only chance 
to work out her own salvation ; having thus directly 
and deliberately rendered a country, which, if un- 
civilized and ignorant, was at least rich and com- 
paratively peaceful, a chaos of blood and murder 
and pillage and arson and rape, how have we met 
the responsibility that we thus assumed? Have we 
tried to bring order out of chaos, safety out of 
murder, peace out of war? Oh, my yes! We've 
tried to bring order out of chaos by putting in more 
chaos; safety out of murder by adding more mur- 
der; and peace out of war by helping everybody 
further to wage war. In our efforts to bring about 



188 SCARS AND STRIPES 

peace we have given Maderistas guns to kill Huer- 
tistas, and Carranzistas guns to kill Villistas, and 
Villistas guns to kill Carranzistas, and we've given 
'em all guns with which to kill us. For, you must 
know, we're the cutest little peacemakers in the 
world and we don't believe in fighting ! 

"Hence it is that after directly plunging Mexico 
into the bloodiest mess possible, all that your Uncle 
Samuel has done to atone for his meddling is to sit 
himself down and write notes! Mexicans are being 
massacred? All right, we'll write 'em a note. . . . 
Americans are being slaughtered ? Oh, to be sure ! 
Boy, another sheet of carbon. . . . There are being 
committed outrage after outrage, atrocity after 
atrocity! . . . We'll write 'em again. Hee, hi, 
hum! For another little note won't do us any 
harm. . . . They're over the border killing United 
States citizens on United States soil? . . . Well, 
well, now what do you think of that? We'll tell 
'em a few lies this time. Boy, a new ribbon. 

"And that's what the old gentleman's been doing 
for three years. Nor even yet has he found out 
the fatuousness, the futility, the disgrace, the dis- 
honour and the shame of it all. Drunk with words, 
sodden and stupid in the coma of conversation, he 
keeps dodderingly, besottedly, slamming away on 
his typewriter. And it looks as though the only 



"dally 'round the flag!" 189 

thing that will stop him is that people will get sick 
of answering him, or else somebody'll get sore and 
bust his typewriter — or maybe sneak up behind 
him while he's in the middle of a paragraph and 
hit him on the head with a piece of lead pipe. 

"But one thing he has done ; for, even if he hasn't 
learned anything himself, he's given the rest of 
the world the best possible concrete and absolute 
illustration of the futility of our national policy. 
And he's proven beyond a peradventure of a doubt 
the uses of notes are limited to the discussion of 
honourable matters with honourable people who 
will abide by the rules. You and I can write notes 
to leach other because we are fairly intelligent white 
men who don't enjoy killing or being killed, and 
who view with distinct disfavour the black eye and 
the bloody nose. Hence notes are of use to us. 

"But when you meet a mad dog, you don't sit 
right down and write him a long letter about the 
higher laws of mankind and that you don't approve 
of hydrophobia as a practice and he must desist at 
once, or you'll write him another note, this time 
harsher. You might as well try to tame a Nubian 
lion with a McGuffey Third Reader, or restrain a 
drunken murderer by reading him Emerson's Es- 
says. 

"At the start of the great war, Germany candidly 



190 SCARS AND STRIPES 

and openly announced to the world that she had 
thrown away the book of rules that civilisation had 
written, and adopted in its place the policy of Force. 
Hence, any efforts to cope with Germany have had 
to be, still have to be, in kind. A nice polite note 
is no reply against a forty-two centimetre gun. If 
you don't believe me, ask the blood-raw corpse of 
Belgium. She tried writing notes. Also she did 
the best she could to meet force with force. But her 
force was the weaker. Hence over her beaten body 
rolls the Juggernaut of Force. 

One of the main curses that your Uncle Sam has 
had to contend with, is that he has been surrounded 
in the high places by half thinkers. By this I mean 
men who get a small piece of an idea and let it go at 
that. Take Bryan, emitting his ponderous plati- 
tudes. 

"Says Bryan, 'Might doesn't make right.' Quite 
true. Might doesn't make right. But, if you carry 
the idea along, neither does right make might. 
Christ was right. But it didn't save Him from 
crucifixion. Countless thousands of gentle, kindly, 
loving women, of innocent little children that 
were not old enough to be anything but right have 
been slaughtered in the world during the last two 
hell-born years. They were right. But it didn't 
prevent their being raped, mutilated and slaughtered. 



"dally 'round the flag!' 191 

"Again we have the head of our nation asserting 
that no lasting thing has ever been created by war. 
Td like to hear him tell that to George Washington, 
or Patrick Henry, or Abraham Lincoln, or U. S. 
Grant. The United States of America was created 
by war. It's lasted pretty well so far. Slavery was 
abolished in the South by war. The freedom of the 
slaves has lasted pretty well, too. 

"And France. From the bleeding spasm of the 
Revolution she came, from a tyrant-ruled country of 
slavery, to be a nation great and strong. And from 
the purging fire of the present war is she emerging 
clean of soul, fine of courage, mighty of honour. 

"To say that no lasting thing has ever been cre- 
ated by war is to make a statement strange and 
incomprehensible. For the truth of it is that very 
few lasting things have been made except by war, 
or in the safe protection given of war and kept 
by the force that war has made. Civilisation has 
been made by war. Few people, or peoples, have 
ever become civilised from choice. Civilisation 
has been rammed down their throats with a gun bar- 
rel. Look at the Cubans. Look at the Filipinos. 
Look at our own Indians. A few years ago they 
were bounding over the boundless plains with a bow 
and arrow in one hand and a human scalp in the 



192 SCARS AND STRIPES 

other, playfully stopping now and again to massacre 
a few whites or to roll them up in green cowhides 
that, in the sun's heat, shrunk to the size of a foot- 
ball with the crushed corpse inside. And then we 
went out there with Force and War and now the 
Indians go to school and wear pants and everything. 
And there's another thing that war has done; and 
that, too, is going to last, at least as long as the 
Indians themselves last, or as long as we last to 
make war on 'em if they budge off the reservation. 
"When you come to a final analysis, everything 
that has really come to this world since its begin- 
ning has been born of war or of the force that would 
be war if needs must. The instinct of man is toward 
destruction. His brain is toward construction. But 
until his brain is developed, his instinct governs. 
Children prove that. Why do children love to break 
windows, and tear up flowers, and throw stones at 
dogs, and pull cats' tails, and step on toads? It's 
because their brains are not developed and their in- 
stincts rule them. And unless you said, 'Don't do 
that,' to them ; unless you trained them and educated 
them and taught them and worked over them they 
would grow up bad ; that is, unless, as they grew up, 
their brains developed so that they could do all these 
things for themselves. And this contention is 
proven by the head hunters. They have been hunt- 



"dally 'round the flag!' 193 

ing heads for generations ; they still hunt heads, and 
no humble bungalow in all their country is happy 
without a few human heads reposing on the mantel- 
piece, or hung up among the wistaria on the front 
porch. And why? Because nobody has ever come 
among them to slam 'em down and sit on them while 
they educated them to the fact that a human head 
is really of no practical value except when it's on 
human shoulders, and that as an ornament, it's far 
outclassed by a globe full of wax flowers, or a por- 
ous motto with God Bless Our Home done on it in 
blue worsted. 

"There are two major forces in the world that 
make for progress, for development and for civ- 
ilisation — religion and education. And throughout 
all history you will find these two riding to their 
kingdoms on the conquering back of the Force that 
is war if needs must. Sometimes Force can work 
successfully without the aid of war, which happens 
where people are naturally peaceable. We have 
done in this way what we could for the freed slaves 
of the South, forcing them without the aid of war 
to go to school, to abide by the law, and sending 
them missionaries who, in reality, are but warriors 
though they carry Bibles instead of rifles. But it 
was only that the negroes were willing to listen to 
the Bibles that kept us from using the rifles. On 



194 SCARS AND STRIPES 

the other hand you have the Filipinos. The only- 
argument they understood was a bolo or a bullet. 
Hence we had to argue with them with bolos and 
bullets until those that were left were in a mood 
receptive of Bibles. And now over there in the 
Philippines they don't celebrate the capture of a 
prisoner by staking him out on an ant hill, or tear- 
ing him to pieces with a bent bamboo. They go to 
school, and read the Bible, and have become, if 
not good, at least peaceable citizens. But it was 
done by War first ; and by other things afterward. 
"No, when you come to think it out, war seems 
like some gigantic form of childbirth. . . . And 
of the childbirth of war, even as the childbirth of 
woman, comes Something. . . . Sometimes this 
Something is malformed ; sometimes it is still-born, 
and sometimes it is good and fine and wonderful in 
its perfect beauty. . . . But always, of war as of 
woman, is it born of suffering, of torture and of 
pain. . . . And why? It would seem to us that 
childbirth ought to be the most gloriously beautiful, 
the most sublimely perfect, of all of earth that can 
come to woman. ... In spirit it is so. In spirit- 
uality it is so. And yet, in fact, it is tearing, rack- 
ing, cruel. . . . Why ? That it is given only to God 
to know. . . . And so, I think, it is with war. . . . 
For it is given us of earth only to understand finite 



C i 



DALLY 'ROUND THE FLAG 1 ." 195 



things with a finite mind. . . . All else, for us, is as 
hidden as the heart of heaven from a cannibal. 

"And to the finite mind is the world revealed only 
as a struggle that began when the world began, that 
will end only when the world shall end. Who lives 
the longest in this world? He who fights hardest 
for his health and well being. Who makes the most 
converts to God? The church that fights hardest 
to that end. The forces of evil fight even as fight 
the forces for good. Prohibitionists fight against 
alcohol even as men who make money by alcohol 
fight for it. Clergymen fight to fill their churches 
even as saloon keepers and moving-picture theatres 
and baseball magnates fight to empty them. Even 
pacifists who do not believe in fighting fight to pre- 
vent fighting. According to his own doctrine, ac- 
cording to everything he preaches, a pacifist ought 
only to stay at home and set a noble example. Yet 
you find them organising Peace Leagues and Anti- 
War Societies, which in themselves are armies; 
electing officers which are in themselves precisely 
analogous to the officers of an army; and holding 
great meetings ; which are in themselves battles. 

"And it isn't because they're wrong in fighting. 
It's just because they don't understand. They fight 
as all the world fights, as all the world has ever 
fought; as all the world will ever fight. Because 



196 SCARS AND STRIPES 

they themselves are nothing but battlefields. Science 
has shown that every pacifist, like everybody else, is 
full of friendly and unfriendly germs. Whereby 
these germs, in their millions, are like the armies of 
the Kaiser and the King. Day and night, year in 
and year out, do they battle in the human trenches 
of our bodies, charging here, routed there, fighting, 
fighting, fighting. ... In gallant fury, the Fight- 
ing White Corpuscles rush along the embattled veins 
driving all before them. . . . Then is a body 
sick. . . . Come the Gallant Red Corpuscles, hun- 
dreds of thousands strong. Shouting the battle-cry 
of Germdom they fling themselves full force upon 
the Whitened hordes. . . . Back and forth they 
surge in hand-to-hand combat. . . . Who will 
win? . . . Along the left flank the White Cor- 
puscles are w r avering. . . . The Red Reserves are 
called into action. ... In thousands they fling 
themselves upon the bulging line of White. ... It 
shivers from the shock. ... It breaks. . . . Flee, 
frantic, frightened, broken, the Whitened lines. . . . 
Follow the victorious Reds. . . . Hurrah! Vic- 
tory ! Victory is ours ! . . . And we are well 
again ! 

"And when all that's going on inside a Pacifist, 
no wonder he fights ! 

"I wonder if these Pacifists really realise how ab- 



"dally 'round the flag!' 197 

surd, how pitiful, or how benighted they look as 
they stand there mouthing their Half Truths, born 
of their Half Thoughts that are fathered of the 
wish. In what they wear, in what they use, in even 
their physical presence is the direct and uncompro- 
mising refutation of all that they say. 

"The clothes upon their back, if they be men, are 
from the hair of animals that have been, or will be, 
but slaughtered living things of God; if they be 
women, perchance they wear upon their heads the 
wings of slain birds, and around their necks the 
cured skins of God's slain creatures. The buttons 
on these clothes are from the bones of murdered 
animals. Upon their feet they wear shoes made of 
the hides of butchered beeves. And there the Paci- 
fists stand, prating that they don't believe in 
force! . . . And the power that gives them even 
that strength to prate — whence comes that? . . . 
From lamb chops, perhaps . . . the ribs of gentle- 
eyed, gentle-souled little sheep across whose pitiful 
bleating throats knives have been drawn. Or veal, 
which is of the ravaged offspring of a mother-cow;' 
the mother-cow with the instinct of the mother- 
woman who mourns for days of that ravishment. . . . 
Of venison, perchance; a proud buck, as monoga- 
mistic as civilised man, a far better lover, a far bet- 
ter provider, a far better protector; or the doe that 



198 SCARS AND STRIPES 

he has protected ; perhaps a doe with fawn, graceful, 
full of the prancing joy of young lifet— the same 
wondrous, unknown thing that makes children romp 
and run. 

"For thus it is that in this world the mighty prey 
upon the weak, and man, the mightiest of all, de- 
stroys the life, eats the flesh and picks the bones of 
living things that God has put upon His earth. . . . 
And the Pacifist, wearing slaughtered life, eating 
slaughtered life, living on, and by, and with, slaugh- 
tered life, doesn't believe in force! 

"But you cannot say that Life is wrong. It is 
the Pacifist that is wrong. Life is Life. We who 
live it must take it as we find it. We will make it 
better if we can. But in the meantime we must 
recognise it as it is. We cannot give to it the attri- 
butes that we think it ought to have and then try to 
live it that way. For that is like trying to walk upon 
the water, and to try to walk upon the water is to 
drown. 

"We have refused to recognise life as it is; obsti- 
nately and pig-headedly we have tried to argue 
against all reason that it is something that we think 
it ought to be. We have gone even further wrong. 
For we have put down all human life under one 
block characterisation. We have refused to recog- 
nise that a Frenchman is a Frenchman, a German 



"dally 'round the flag!" 199 

a German, and a Mexican a Mexican. To us all 
mankind is alike, to be dealt with uniformly. 

"With equal reverence, with equal equity, we 
have written notes to the English who, playing the 
game fairly, regard them as notes; and to the Ger- 
mans who, having chucked away the book, regard 
them as jokes; and to the Mexicans, who not being 
able to read much and not understanding very well 
that which they do read, regard them as insults. 
And all because we have arrived at a point of na- 
tional prosperity and national security that we have 
entirely lost our recollection of history, our view- 
point on life and our common sense about facts. 
Upon a war-won national existence we have built a 
flimsy superstructure of idealism that the first van- 
dal hand that chooses can yank down with one pull. 
A good strong puff from any nation who really un- 
derstands Things as They Are would send our fine 
Palace of Dreams tumbling down about us and be- 
fore we got ourselves unsnarled from the ruins, 
something would descend upon our heads and we'd 
find ourselves with a harp in our hands and a pair 
of wings at our shoulder-blades, while all the prac- 
tical angels, like George Washington and Abraham 
Lincoln, and King Solomon and Noah (the latter, 
by the way, being the original disciple of Prepared- 
ness in that, when popular sentiment was entirely 



200 SCARS AND STRIPES 

against it, with everybody calling him an alarmist 
and saying what a chump he was to get all worked 
up when there was no danger, proceeded to build 
the ark, and when the flood came to sail happily 
away, while all the followers of Anti-Preparedness, 
like the Bryans and the Fords of those days, stayed 
behind and drowned a whole lot) — as I say, all these 
practical angels, wise and just and good in their 
day and generation, would we see gathered around 
us, shaking their heads in gentle, pitying reproach 
at so vast and unreasoning an ignorance. . . . And 
what would we have to say in self -extenuation for 
having so done with the country that George and 
Abraham left to us of their lifetimes' work and de- 
votion and love? ... I opine that we'd be the 
cheapest-looking lot of angels that ever got to 
heaven. 

"For it is to Pacifists and Idealists alike to re- 
member that these men believed in fighting. They 
didn't argue that Might didn't make Right. They 
didn't try to excuse their own failure to meet facts 
as they were by saying that war never created any 
lasting thing. They believed in fighting. They be- 
lieved in the Force of Good applied, if possible, by 
Peace, if not, by War. They believed in fighting, 
even as Christ believed in fighting. And if you 



< < ~ . ^ ^ ,^ ' 



DALLY ROUND THE FLAG! 201 

don't believe me, you have His own words for it, 
when, before Pilate, He said : 

" 'My kingdom is not of this world! if my king- 
dom were of this world, then would my servants 
fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews.' 
And if that means anything, it means that Christ, 
being interested only in spiritual things, believed 
in fighting only spiritually; but that, had He been 
interested in material things, He would have had 
no hesitation in fighting materially. Hence Christ 
fought His way, leaving us, who are not Christs, to 
fight ours. 

"Also you can take His advice to 'Render unto 
Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the 
things that are God's.' With the substitution of 
Carranza for Caesar we have rather good counsel 
for to-day in the Mexican mess. 

"And have we of America followed Christ's spir- 
itual teachings? Hardly. Have we followed the 
worldly teachings of George Washington and Abra- 
ham Lincoln? Again hardly. Whose teachings, 
then, have we followed? And the answer is that 
we haven't been following the teachings of any- 
body. 

"Here we are, the richest nation in the world, and 
the most supine and the fattest, both in body and 
in head. Wallowing in physical luxury, we have 



202 SCARS AND STRIPES 

become spiritually so loose, so lax and so lazy that 
we have almost lost the capacity to think and to act. 
And all that our boasted American hustling has 
really accomplished is to create these two well- 
known and justly celebrated American institutions, 
the quick lunch and the quick hearse, in the first of 
which you can get chronic indigestion for a nickel, 
whereat the second will take you from the chapel to 
the grave in seventeen minutes; so that even in 
death are we still hustling. 

"The fact that at last our selfishness, our laxness 
and our money lust have put us against the iron 
has raised a certain amount of finer feeling in sec- 
tions, which is much to be thankful for, but hardly 
enough, when you come to think that for months 
now the entire United States regular army has been 
the plaything of a lot of Mexican bandits. We have 
called out our National Guard. Thank God for the 
splendid spirit it has shown; even as God pity us 
for having so betrayed and neglected it. If, while 
we're sitting here talking, there should be a call for 
volunteers, again should we be grateful for the 
glow of patriotism for which we, as a nation, are in 
no way responsible, at the same time wondering 
where in Sam Hill we're going to find guns for 'em, 
to say nothing of equipment, ammunition, or yet 
shoes. And we have no officers to lead them; and 



U_ . _ _ 9 



DALLY ROUND THE FLAG! 203 

remember, it takes fully a year to make even a very 
ordinary officer. Remember, too, that three years 
have passed while we have fatuously and flatulently 
neglected even so obvious a necessity as that. 

"And whatever may happen in Mexico, remem- 
ber that we have no choice but that sooner or later 
we must go in, or give up the Monroe Doctrine. 
Whereby, in a final analysis, it all comes down to 
the question : 

"Is America going to be a world power, or isn't 
she? 

"If she is, it's time, and beyond, when she should 
begin to stop acting like a weak-willed, weak- 
minded, weak-principled megalomaniac and begin to 
behave like the power that she wants to be. No 
individual can attain success sitting in the corner 
counting his fingers when other individuals are in 
active endeavour in the marts of trade. Similarly, 
no nation can attain respect, power and dignity by 
side-stepping every issue it meets." 

My friend turned. 

"God puts us here. He does not tell us His secrets. 
He leaves us here, unaided, to do our human best 
in His human world. In His mysterious wisdom 
He has put us on a world where there is much thai 
we do not understand, much that we do not like, 
much that we love, much that we hate, much for 



204 SCARS AND STRIPES 

which we rejoice, much for which we are sorry. 
We find upon that earth mother-love and murder, 
health and sickness, happiness and sorrow, laughter 
and lying, tenderness and treachery, kindness and 
brutality, civilisation and slavery, beauty and bes- 
tiality, rapture and ravishment, religion and rape. 
We find faith, hope and charity; and we find war, 
famine and pestilence. We find joy and health and 
life; as we find sorrow and sickness and death. We 
find man; and we find beast. We find gentle peo- 
ple ; and we find savage animals. For even as God 
has put upon earth you and me, so has He put there 
the Bengal tiger and the Gila monster. 

"Why all these things were put here we do not, 
we cannot, know. Nor has all the time since the 
world began, nor have all the churches, all the pray- 
ers, all the civilisation, all the labours of generation 
on generation of man served to eliminate that which 
we deem wrong, or to enhance that which we deem 
right. It is in degree only that has come even the 
little betterment we find ; and that degree has come 
only through righteous force backed, if need be, by 
righteous war. 

"It is for us to realise that even as God gives to 
the tiger claws with which to defend himself; even 
as He gives to the Gila monster fangs, and to the 
chameleon the gift of changing colour, so to man- 



i, i 



DALLY 'ROUND THE FLAGl n 205 



kind He has given intelligence. He gives the Eng- 
lish and the French brains to defend themselves 
against the German monster; or, if you be German, 
He gives the Germans brains to defend themselves 
against English and French oppression. The tiger 
uses his claws. The rattlesnake uses his fangs. The 
chameleon changes its colour. The English, the 
French, the Germans use their brains. And it is 
now not for us to continue, supine, witless, arro- 
gant and idealistic, to deny ourselves the use of that 
which God has given us by questioning His gifts or 
quarrelling with His world. While other nations 
have used brains, we have used emotions. Where 
other nations have used intelligence, we have used 
idealism. Where other nations have been wise men, 
we have been fools. And it has brought us to 
shame, to contempt, to abuse and to murder. Let 
us in His name stop before it brings us to destruc- 
tion. 

"For now, more than ever in our history, do we 
need to realise, and to make others realise, how 
great, how grievous, are our needs. For saying 
what we must say to expose these needs, we shall 
be criticised ; we shall be scolded by the half thinkers 
who, reading in their half-thinking way, believe that 
we are condemning America and Americans. Them 
we must try to make understand that we are not 



206 SCARS AND STRIPES 

condemning America. We think it is the finest 
country in the world, with the finest institutions in 
the world. But we want it so to remain. We are 
not condemning Americans. We think we are the 
finest race in the world with the finest racial traits 
in the world. And we want us so to remain. But 
we are condemning, and condemning as hard as we 
know how, that class of Americans who are too fat, 
too selfish, too vain, too arrogant, too ignorant, too 
helpless, too supine, too cowardly, too inept, too in- 
competent, or too sound asleep to be good Amer- 
icans. It is for them to try to realize what America 
needs and be good enough Americans to give it to 
her ; and that it's up to every man, woman and child 
who loves America to pitch in and help out 

"Let them try to understand that what we are 
working for, and all we are working for, is a race of 
good, united Americans in the great, united Amer- 
ica that our fathers left us in peace and in power, in 
the great America that we love and honour and re- 
spect, in whose traditions we glory, in whose 
strength we are proud, and in whose dignity and 
whose God we trust ; and that it is for us so to act 
that when it comes time for us to join those fine men 
from whom we sprung, we can go with head erect, 
with eyes firm, with soul clean. 

"For," he concluded, "I'd certainly hate to walk 



"dally 'round the flag!" 207 

in through the pearly gates to find everybody 
ashamed of us, to see George Washington turn his 
face away in sorrow, and have Abraham Lincoln 
sadly shake his fine old head in grief of what we had 
done of the land that he loved and for which he 
lived and died; and even Diogenes passing us up, 
without even bringing his lantern over, as not worth 
while bothering with ; while Judas Iscariot sat over 
in the corner chewing his whiskers in jealousy be- 
cause he only betrayed One while we're betraying 
a hundred million, and Marie Antoinette, who pos- 
sessed about the same absence of views on anything 
as Henry Ford, until she entirely lost her head over 
the matter, smiling beautifully on us from beside 
Icarus, the premier aviator of his time, who, as we 
of to-day, neglected to plan ahead until all of a 
sudden he got an Awful Bump; not to mention Da- 
vid, like Noah one of the early followers of Pre- 
paredness who got busy when the time came and 
fixed himself with a sling and a couple or rocks and 
went over and got Old Man Goliath ; and the kind- 
faced, kind-souled people of the gentle hills of Bel- 
gium, men, women, little children warm from God's 
own arms, who Know because It Happened to 
Them. . . . 

"All these we want to face clean, straight, hon- 
est. . . . We want them to be glad to see us, not 



208 SCARS AND STRIPES 

sorry. . . . We want them to be proud of us, not 
ashamed. ... It is much to ask. Yet it is not too 
much. . . . Do you think so?" 

I shook my head. For God knows it is not. 



THE END 



